Household spending patterns

Thank you for the feedback. The household spending patterns were available in the previous online IMPLAN tool (https://main.implanonline.com/), so it's surprising that they aren't available in the current tool. I guess I will try importing a spending pattern from the previous tool to use here.

You can utilize the old Activity Template, now called the Event Template to pull in data from a spending pattern you have elsewhere. The article Using the Event Template will walk you through the steps.

Thanks for pointing me to this option. When I tried importing a spending pattern with the commodity output change, it ended up giving me hundreds of individual commodity output events. Is there a way to combine these into a single "Bill of Goods" event with multiple commodities, similar to the Commodity Change Activity in the previous version of IMPLAN Online?

On a related note, how do I delete hundreds of individual events at the same time?

Thanks for your help!

Hello,

Unfortunately there is no way to combine these Commodity Events on the Event side of the Impact screen in app.implan.com. These Events can only be grouped together as a Group on the right-hand side of the Impact screen. There is also not an option for deleting multiple Events at once.

I am communicating your feedback on these feature limitations to our Product Team. Your input helps them determine the priority of new developments. 

You should still have access to www.implanonline.com, but unfortunately datasets are only available through the 2017 Data Year. I wish I could offer better options as I understand that working with the household spending as individual Commodity Events is not convenient, while working with older data in implanonline.com is likely unhelpful. Thank you for making us aware of how this impacts your work, so we can work towards a solution. 

Best,
Maria

OK, I appreciate your passing along my experiences to the Product Team.

As a workaround, I am wondering if it be possible to create my own household spending pattern? My thought was to use the Household Commodity Demand under Study Area Data, combined with the Average RPCs under Social Accounts > Reports > Commodity Summary. I could divide each of the entries in the household commodity demand by the total to get a spending percentage. Then, I would multiply these percentages by my total spending to get the distribution of commodities (modified to my particular needs). Finally, I would enter these into the Event Template along with the Average RPCs in the LPP field and then import those as Commodity Events. Does this approach make sense?

Hello,

Yes, this works as a great workaround! 

Best of luck,
Maria 

Hello,

I hope this approach worked smoothly for you. While running some testing, I used this use case and found that one step you'll need to take is to remove the Commodity Events with values of zero.

The easiest way I found to do so was to sort by Event Value in the Template from largest to smallest, then deleted the zero value entries. 

Best,
Maria 

Have the household spending patterns been added to app.implan.com yet?

Hello,

Household Spending Pattern Event Types have not been added to the online version of IMPLAN at this time. 

Best,

Michael Nealy

Bebureaudo you know the difference between doing your method with the RPC's versus just using "SAM" for the local purchase percentage? Using "SAM" is certainly quite a bit easier.