It’s tempting to talk about “the aftermarket” as if it operates under a single set of conditions. But what defines performance in one sector is not what strains it in another.
Part of the reason is structural. In some industries, the aftermarket is driven primarily through parts sales across dealer networks. In others, it's shaped more heavily by OEM-delivered service, contracts, and uptime guarantees.
External conditions also differ widely — from commodity price swings to uptime-sensitive service environments — shaping where pressure appears operationally. As a result, the constraints affecting performance can look very different from one sector to the next.
This is one of the takeaways from our State of the Aftermarket 2025 research, which clearly shows that external pressures do not land with equal force across industries.
The heatmap below highlights which pressures surface most prominently within each industry.
In automotive, competitive intensity stands out as the dominant pressure. Dealer networks operate alongside independent distributors and a large ecosystem of aftermarket suppliers, creating a market where many parts are widely available and pricing transparency is high. In that environment, OEMs are constantly balancing competitiveness, dealer profitability, and channel alignment.
Respondents in construction and mining are significantly more likely to highlight uptime expectations as the defining pressure shaping their aftermarket operations. For equipment operating in fleet environments or under service contracts, availability is often written directly into SLAs, with high penalties for equipment downtime or delayed service response. The commercial model therefore places sustained emphasis on reliability across service delivery.
In agriculture, cost volatility surfaces more frequently than in other sectors, reflecting the economic cycles that shape farm profitability. Farmers’ purchasing decisions are influenced not only by OEM pricing or supply chain conditions, but also by seasonality, commodity markets, weather patterns, regulatory shifts, and broader changes in farm income. Those factors create a more variable demand environment for both equipment and parts.
In automotive parts networks, where many components are available from multiple suppliers, the impact of pricing decisions appears quickly. If a regional price change moves a commonly replaced part out of line with competitor offerings, dealers may lose the sale immediately, leaving inventory on the shelf and margin opportunities lost across the network.
In construction and mining, where uptime carries immediate operational consequences, the pressure shows up in parts availability and service coordination. If a critical component is not positioned in the right location ahead of a scheduled service interval, a repair may be delayed, equipment sits idle, and contractual uptime commitments can quickly come under pressure.
In industries exposed to higher cost volatility, such as agriculture, the strain often appears in how quickly pricing, planning, and supplier decisions can be coordinated. When commodity markets shift or input costs rise unexpectedly, OEMs must adjust pricing and inventory positioning fast enough to protect margins while ensuring dealers still have parts available during critical planting or harvest windows.
Across the State of the Aftermarket dataset, 81% of respondents indicate they plan to increase investment in optimizing their aftermarket operations.
Those priorities translate into a wide range of operational initiatives, from pricing optimization to strengthen margin discipline to inventory planning or network optimization to improve availability and reduce exposure to stock imbalances.
But when capital is deployed without a clear view of which external forces are shaping performance, capability can deepen in areas that are not under immediate stress. Advanced pricing tools may deliver incremental gains in a business where availability is the real issue. Inventory optimization may improve cost exposure while service responsiveness remains inconsistent.
As a result, organizations can find themselves investing in becoming more capable in general terms, while the underlying source of performance pressure persists.
Technology investment can be compelling, but without clarity on which operational problems a business is actually trying to solve — and where it is most exposed — even the most sophisticated capabilities may struggle to deliver meaningful returns. Understanding how pressure manifests across industries is therefore a critical starting point for directing investment where it will have the greatest impact.
This theme connects directly to the aftermarket readiness gap explored in the first article in this series, where we examined the growing distance between rising revenue expectations and the operational capabilities required to deliver them. In the next article, we turn to another external force shaping aftermarket strategy — tariffs — and how different regions are responding to that pressure.
Explore the full State of the Aftermarket 2025 research for more insights.