Top 100 Retailers 2021 List

The Top 100 Retailers are ranked by past 52/53-week annual retail sales. In almost all instances, sales used to rank companies are for retail activity in the United States only; footnotes are provided when this is not the case.

To arrive at U.S. retail sales figures, a variety of estimation techniques are applied based on publicly disclosed information. For this reason, the figures presented do not always match the companies’ official public filing reports.

Company revenues from non-retailing operating segments are removed unless otherwise noted; system-wide sales are provided when the operation is a franchise. In keeping with the methodology used in previous years, rankings eliminate fuel sales at locations designated as having a gasoline/fueling station as its primary business.

What constitutes a segment Power Player? Any retailer in this Top 100 list with 2020 U.S. sales equal to or greater than 10 percent of the sales of the category leader.

Selection criteria for the U.S. Top 100 list is based on Kantar’s Retail IQ integrated research methodology:

• Retail coverage: More than 1,000 retail accounts across the world with sales and store growth by banner forecast out five years using company reports and Kantar’s projection models and research methods that include insights developed by Kantar through research on the largest retailers and discussions with many industry leaders.

• Depth of coverage: Each major retail account analyzed at the banner and format level and summarized in the aggregate for a total of more than 4,000 banners.

• Retailer coverage: All retailers with $2 billion in annual retail sales volume and key format leaders for Kantar’s core 50 countries, plus exceptions for impactful retailers with as little as $1 billion annual retail sales volume.

• Kantar currently tracks over 1,000 retailers with sales in excess of $2 billion annually. We glean information from store and market visits, retailer websites, industry websites, news searches in several languages, regulatory bodies, annual reports, and analyst and retailer conference calls.

• This information is streamlined and entered into our database, which allows for efficient presentation of only the most relevant information. Kantar structures its sales estimates around the ROY-BCMF principle — Retailer-Ownership-Year and Banner-Chain Type-Market-Format — which allows us to present highly detailed and explanatory analysis. For each retailer that we enter into the database, we break out sales, stores and square footage.

• Kantar is always expanding chain coverage to include retailers that are influential or important at a country level. When added, these retailers follow the same standard as the others — our estimates are done on a banner-by-banner basis.

NRF’s Top 100 includes several noteworthy departures from Kantar’s established methodology:

• It considers and includes key telecom players such as AT&T and Verizon.

• It considers vertically integrated brand specialty retail sales, as assessed/estimated by Kantar’s retail experts.

  • A vertically integrated brand is either 1) a manufacturer that has a network of stores selling their branded products as part of their overall business model such as Nike, Levi’s, and Bose, or 2) a retailer has extensive manufacturer holdings such as Lidl, Future Retail, and Kroger.

• Note: The 2021 U.S. Top 100 list excludes restaurant chains, which were included in prior years.

*This list was updated September 27, 2021.