Tyler Economic Intelligence - Affinity Consumer Spending Data

What is Affinity Consumer Spending Data?

Affinity Consumer Spending Data is one of the data sources that powers Economic Intelligence. It allows users to track and analyze consumer spending changes, a critical signal of economic activity. The data is collected from various debit and credit cards, and then anonymized and aggregated by Affinity Solutions.

This data is highly granular, and can be broken down by:

• geography, at the census tract level

• industry, at the MCC code level (26 different codes)

• time period, at the weekly level (and refreshed weekly)

This vital data, used by leading economists, is now available in aggregated form for state and local government executives and their staff so they can use that data to understand and track their economic activity. When you purchase Economic Intelligence, this data appears in the form of out-of-the-box metrics on your dashboard, pre-configured to get you the most valuable insights about consumer spending in your jurisdiction.

Economic Intelligence clients are also able to export the data for internal sharing and for ad-hoc analysis. The MCC industry codes and Census Tract IDs facilitate joining with other datasets, including Census demographic data. Data visualizations may be shared publicly, but the underlying data may not.

The key difference between this data source and Safegraph Business Revenues Data is that Affinity Consumer Spending Data tracks the spending of people within a jurisdiction, whether or not the money is going to businesses within that jurisdiction. Safegraph Business Revenues Data tracks revenues of businesses that are physically located within a jurisdiction.

Why Use Affinity Consumer Spending Data?

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local government leaders face unprecedented challenges in reviving their economies. In order to navigate their recovery and pinpoint economic recovery interventions to those areas most in need, state and local government leaders need granular, timely insights on the contours of economic activity in their jurisdiction. Affinity Consumer Spending Data uniquely allows state and local government leaders to answer questions such as: 

• How was consumer spending affected by the pandemic, or other periods of economic uncertainty? Are consumers in my jurisdiction spending less or more? What are they spending their money on? 

• How do public health interventions affect patterns in consumer spending? 

• How does economic uncertainty affect consumer spending in different industries? Are there particular industries that warrant public policy interventions to promote economic development?

• How is geographic location tied to economic recovery? Are there some neighborhoods that have suffered especially severe effects from economic downturns? Do different neighborhoods have different spending patterns? 

Who Uses Affinity Consumer Spending Data?

State and local government executives and their staff are key users of Affinity Consumer Spending Data. As a feature of Economic Intelligence, this data is pre-packaged to allow even the most non-technical audiences to derive value from the data. However, since the data is also available to be exported for ad-hoc analysis, more technical personas can join the dataset with other datasets for advanced analysis. Key personas include:

• Governor/Mayor/County Executives and their staff 

• Policy Director

• Economic Development Director 

• Chief Financial Officer 

• Community Development Director 

• Disaster Recovery Director 

• Small Business Services Director  

How do I obtain Affinity Consumer Spending Data?

Affinity Consumer Spending Data is only available to Economic Intelligence clients.

What are the columns/fields in the data and how are they defined?