Motor-Vehicle Spare Parts

The procurement of motor-vehicle spare parts through traditional physical markets presents challenges such as difficulty in identifying compatible parts, lack of price transparency, geographic and time constraints, and absence of centralized vendor platforms. This study focused on the design and development of a web-based online marketplace for motor-vehicle spare parts to address these limitations by providing a centralized, secure, and user-friendly platform connecting vendors and customers. The research adopted the Agile methodology using the Scrum framework and implemented a layered system architecture consisting of presentation, application, data access, and data storage layers. The system was developed using PHP for server-side processing, MySQL for database management, and HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and the Bootstrap framework for responsive user interface design. Selected spare-parts markets in Benin City, Edo State—Evbareke Market, Uwelu Market, and Igun Market were used as case studies to understand vendor operations and customer needs. The study objectives included designing a marketplace that supports product listing and searching based on vehicle make and model, implementing secure user authentication for buyers and vendors, enabling price comparison and vendor rating features, and testing the system to ensure reliable operation. The implemented system successfully delivered a functional multi-vendor marketplace with advanced search and filtering, vehicle compatibility matching, secure shopping cart and checkout processes, order management, inventory control, and role-based access control. Results demonstrated that the system effectively addresses problems associated with traditional spare- parts procurement by improving accessibility, transparency, and efficiency. Challenges such as database optimization, security implementation, responsive design, and system integration were encountered and resolved. The study concludes that web-based marketplace technologies can effectively transform spare-parts trading and support digital transformation in the automotive industry.