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Grocery stores go super in battle for shoppers
Journal Sentinel,
Milwaukee, WI, January 2, 2010
...competing with Woodman's on price is difficult, said supermarket consultant David Livingston of Waukesha. Woodman's prices are similar to Wal-Mart Supercenter's, typically the lowest in any market region....
"They used to have a 1.25% market share for each store," Livingston said. He expects that share to decline to about 0.75% per store in the future. Each Woodman's store takes about 3% of the market, Livingston said.
Here and Now: Grocery Competition
KJZZ, NPR,
Phoenix, AZ, November 18, 2009
Here and Now spoke with grocery analysts Burt Flickinger III and David Livingston about Arizona's competitive supermarket industry.
Listen to full interview
Site Unseen
Connecticut Post,
Bridgeport, CT, October 14, 2009
One expert that has often been asked to assist retailers in choosing or evaluating existing or potential sites is retail consultant, David Livingston, of DJL Research, LLC (www.davidjlivingston.com). He explains Gravity Modeling as:
"Evaluating locations by simulating competitors and competition within a given market or trade area. The population is subdivided into small neighborhoods called sectors. Each sector has a population centroid or center of the population within the sector. Then the competitors' size, sales, and ability to draw business over the distance between two locations are simulated. When forecasting a new location, parameters of the new store's size and customer appeal are simulated and a projection is made."
Mr. Livingston further explains that Gravity Modeling is flexible enough to accommodate additional concerns:
"Travel restriction barriers for both natural (mountains and rivers) and psychological considerations (bad neighborhoods) can be factored in, restricting travel and therefore simulating actual travel patterns." This means we can keep some sectors from taking shortcuts (as the crow flies) to the site but rather simulated the actual driving distance."
The Art of Site Selection
While there is a method to the site selection that is heavily quantitative and integrates complex modeling, Mr. Livingston also cautions his clients that there are also qualitative concerns that should be addressed in site selection. One such consideration is assessing the impact of competition on the potential of a business in a new site:
"That requires good judgment from experience. You need to evaluate the competition in all directions and determine how much sales each one is getting from the trade area. The gravity model will simulate taking a certain amount of sales and allocating it to the proposed location."
Ukrop’s may be awaiting a better suitor
ichmond Times-Dispatch,
Richmond, VA, October 7, 2009
hat assessment by David J. Livingston, president of DJL Research LLC, a Wisconsin-based supermarket consulting firm, comes after Supermarket News said a potential deal had fallen apart.
...Livingston believes Ukrop's is holding out until it finds a buyer that shares its principles.
"Just because there is an offer doesn't mean they have to take it," he said. "It could be that they aren't looking for the highest bidder, but the best bidder."
Ukrop's built its reputation and its business by following certain principles, including closing on Sundays and not selling beer and wine, he said. Those ideals are very important to the Ukrop family, he said.
"The Ukrops are smart enough to look for someone that has the same core values they have. That's what helped them build the company and what made them what they are," Livingston said
Fresh & Easy is expected to lose $259 million in fiscal year
Los Angeles Time,
Los Angeles, CA, October 7, 2009
Everything has gone awry, from store operations to pricing to variety and selection to their locations. You could not do much worse unless you did it on purpose," said David J. Livingston, a Waukesha, Wis., grocery industry consultant. "They were arrogant and totally misjudged the American consumer."
Publix to add stores in Lee County
News-Press,
Fort Myers, FL, September 23, 2009
David Livingston, a Wisconsin-based supermarket analyst and founder of DJL Research, lauded the company's business approach.
"They're doing a lot of things right," Livingston said. "They're employee-owned rather than publicly held -and that gives them a tremendous advantage because they can react to the consumer, rather than Wall Street. That's probably their biggest advantage over the competition. What else they're doing right is they're experimenting with some new formats and when they find they've made a mistake, they go back to the drawing board. When something's not working, they know when to quit and go in a different direction."
Being employee-owned is good for employee morale, which also gives Publix a leg up on competitors because high morale improves customer service and the shopping environment, he added.
Ironically, Livingston credited Walmart's entry into full-line groceries over the past 10 years with driving out Publix competitors in the Southeast while enabling the chain, because of its strengths, to expand.
"It's almost as if Wal-mart paved the way for them," he said.
Super Walmart Brings Price Options to Milwaukee Groceries
Today's TMJ4—NBC,
Milwaukee, WI, June 3, 2009
"I think this is really going to benefit the consumer," explained David Livingston, a grocery store expert.
He says stores all over Wisconsin are expanding.
The latest is Wednesday's grand opening of the south side Super Walmart.
"Milwaukee prices have been a high price market because competition left the market," said Livingston.
It's places like Walmart that are competitive in these tough times because they offer lower prices.
"People who shopped at upscale stores are shopping at conventional stores, people who shopped at conventional stores are shopping the low price stores."
Livingston says when Woodman's opened up in Oak Creek, prices at other grocery stores in that area dropped.
After 75 years, lights out for Bruno's Supermarkets
The Birmingham News,
Birmingham, AL, April 26, 2009
Culture aside, private equity groups such as KKR and others that subsequently led Bruno's had a different business model than the family that nurtured the company for decades, said David J.
Livingston, a Wisconsin-based grocery industry analyst.
"Those companies aren't in the business of growing. They're more in the business of milking. Their job is just to squeeze as much money out of the company as they can. They don't have long-term aspirations, and whatever problems they have become the next owner's issue," he said.
At the same time, Bruno's was caught in an hourglass of competition, Livingston said, as Wal-Mart entered Alabama with its Supercenter stores and gobbled up grocery market share on the lower end, while Publix did the same on the higher end.
As a result, companies in the middle, including Mobile-based Delchamps, Winn-Dixie and Bruno's, all suffered, he said.
"It was inevitable because that was their business model," Livingston said of the demise of Bruno's. "They've just been made obsolete. Their stores have become redundant. That's the evolution of the grocery business."
May I help you?
Wall Street Journal,
online, April 22, 2009
Worker bonuses at Publix are tied to corporate and individual performance goals. "These guys are basically on commission: They get paid on what they produce," says David Livingston, a consultant for DJL Research LLC, a supermarket consulting firm in Waukesha, Wis.
Publix Ready to Open Its 1,000th Store Next Month In St. Augustine
The Ledger,
Lakeland, FL, January 21, 2009
Supermarket analyst David Livingston largely attributes Publix's growth to savvy management, but he also said the chain has been helped by a proliferation of Wal-Mart Supercenters that squeezed out weaker competitors. With 714 stores in Florida, Publix leads all grocers with about 40 percent of the state market share, according to the Trade Dimensions research firm.
Wal-Mart Supercenters account for roughly 24 percent of the Florida market, trailed by Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie at 13 percent.
"Publix has actually taken advantage of when the competition stumbled," said Livingston, referring to Winn-Dixie's bankruptcy woes in 2005 and the slow demise of Albertson's.
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