The Top 100 Retailers in 2023
If there’s one theme that emerges from our 2023 ranking of top retailers, it’s resiliency. Despite a troubled market plagued by economic pressures that are leading to a mad dash of store closings and layoffs across the industry, retailers are continuing to find ways to thrive.
For the sixth consecutive year, RIS has collaborated with wRatings to rank the industry’s top performing retailers. We’ve highlighted the top 100 companies that are continuing to prosper despite the ongoing volatility, analyzing their percentage of market share and how it translates to overall sales and where these companies are investing to maintain their competitive edge. The Top 10 alone totals $2.4 trillion in sales — besting last year’s $2.3 trillion.
Why the List Looks a Little Different This Year
When comparing this year’s list to last year, we’ve implemented a few changes, which impacted overall rankings when comparing year-over-year. For this year’s rankings, we’ve pulled out all the retailers that were not North America-based. This move eliminated a total of five retailers from the 2023 list, including two which normally make the Top 10: JD.com and Alibaba Group. The five retailers eliminated included four from China and one from Japan because, while these companies all trade on a U.S.-based stock exchange, they don’t operate stores in the country. Additionally, we deleted the restaurant chains category, which is why readers won’t see another historically high ranker — Starbucks, which came in at No. 19 in 2022 — represented in 2023.
The revamp of the list this year was implemented to create a pure retailer list of North American companies. Our hope is that this year’s Top 100 Retailers list more accurately represents our readership.
These changes did not impact the top five retailers on this year’s list, but the removal of JD.com and Alibaba Group left room for home improvement retailer Lowe’s and convenience retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard to step up to the limelight, notching the No. 9 and No. 10 spots of the top 10 retailers.
Below is the full Top 100 Retailers list, as well as a comprehensive look at our top five, and report methodology.
The Top 5 Retailers in 2023
1. Walmart
The remainder of the Top 10 includes most of last year’s retail strongholds, including Kroger, Walgreens Boots, and Target. As previously mentioned, Lowe’s and Alimentation Couche-Tard are newcomers to the list compared to last year, raking in 2.7% and 2.57% shares of the retail market, respectively.
Kroger, which has managed several significant enterprise-wide investments over the past year, including a heavy workforce wellbeing lift and a middle-mile transportation overhaul, celebrated $148 billion in sales and a 4.12% share of the market.
Meanwhile, Walgreens Boots ($132 billion) launched a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, same-day delivery service; Target ($109 billion) launched nationwide drive-up returns and is planning for several supply chain investments; and Lowe’s ($97 billion) is transforming its supply chain by leveraging digital twin technology that fuses spatial data with other data like product location and historical orders to form a complete digital picture.
Methodology
While other lists rank retailers on total revenue, profit, or even share price, this annual list takes a different approach. The retailers that make our Top 100 are ranked on their piece of the total retail market.
Our rankings are based on data gathered from research partner Gary A. Williams, CEO of wRatings. The financial metrics of 180 publicly traded retailers were examined.
The economic data is from a trailing 12-month period ending on March 24, 2023. The percent of retail market share was calculated against a total retail market of around $3.6 trillion. The research ranked North American (including U.S., Canada, Bermuda, Virgin Islands) retailers across apparel, department store, grocery, furniture, beauty, building supply, convenience/fuel, e-commerce, hardlines, and softlines segments.