Amazon, Apple Surge Higher in Top Retailers' List
By: When you reflect on how Amazon.com and Apple have impacted our culture, perhaps it's no surprise that the two retailers are shaking up the retail landscape as they vault upward in the rankings of a widely watched list of the top US retailers.
Stores Top 100 Retailers is an annual list of US retailers ranked by domestic sales that was compiled by Kantar Retail and sponsored by Verizon. While the top 10 companies on the list remained nearly unchanged once again, both Amazon and Apple made considerable jumps last year.
Amazon climbed from No. 26 to No. 19 on this year's list. The online retailer's sales rose 46.2 percent to $18.5 billion in 2010.
Not only has the company become one of the key go-to sites on the Web, the company's Kindle has changed the way people read, with purchases of e-books now outnumbering the those of hard- and soft-cover books at Amazon.com.
Apple climbed more than 30 spots, from No. 52 to No. 21. The company's US retail sales rose 32.2 percent to $18 billion. The sales growth is impressive, and has been driven by popular products such as the iPhone and iPad.
Here is a list of the top 10 retailers:
The Stores Top 100 Retailers
| Rank | Store | 2010 US Sales (000) | Sales Growth ('10 vs. '09) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wal-mart Stores | $307,736,000 | 0.6% |
| 2 | Kroger | 78,326,000 | 6.4% |
| 3 | Target | 65,815,000 | 3.8% |
| 4 | Walgreen | 61,240,000 | 6.3% |
| 5 | The Home Depot | 60,194,000 | 2.2% |
| 6 | Costco | 58,983,000 | 5.5% |
| 7 | CVS Caremark | 57,464,000 | 3.5% |
| 8 | Lowe's | 48,175,000 | 2.8% |
| 9 | Best Buy | 37,110,000 | -0.3% |
| 10 | Sears Holdings | 35,362,000 | -2.2% |
Questions? Comments? Email us at consumernation@cnbc.com. Follow Christina Cheddar Berk on Twitter @ccheddarberk.
