Who, What, Why And How

The Top 100 Retailers are listed by annual revenues, which may include estimates for private or closely-held companies.

Retailers included in the Top 100 either have group headquarters located in the United States or are foreign entities with significant operations in the U.S. market. For retailers with group headquarters located overseas, data is presented for North American operations only. Revenues from major non-retailing operating segments are excluded where data availability allows.

The most significant change to this year’s Top 100 is the elimination, where possible, of data for non-retailing operations, which most affects the rankings of CVS Caremark, Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax. In response to our annual re-evaluation of what does — and does not — constitute a retailer, the Defense Commissary Agency and Sherwin-Williams Paint Stores make their Top 100 debuts.

What constitutes a segment Power Player? Any retailer with 2008 revenues equal to or greater than 10 percent of the revenues of the category leader.

About Planet Retail
Planet Retail is the leading provider of global retailing information, from news and analysis to market research and digital media.

Covering more than 7,000 retail and food-service operations across 140 markets around the world, many of the world’s leading companies turn to Planet Retail as a definitive source of business intelligence.