How are Retailers looking in 2011?

Supermarket News reveals sales among the Top 75 food retailers in North America recovered from a slump in 2009, rising 7.7% during 2010, compared with a cumulative drop of 0.2% a year ago. Total revenues, encompassing sales of food and nonfood merchandise, totaled $960.3 billion last year, compared with $891.4 billion in 2009. Revenues among the 10 largest companies on the list rose 2.2% to $666.1 billion in 2010.
Stores like Walmart and Kroger, Meijers, and Giant are ranked in the top 25 retailers.
In terms of rank, there was little movement from the year before as Wal-Mart sits comfortably at the top of the list. Kroger is still number two, but number three Costco is closing the gap. Safeway has passed Supervalu for the number four spot with the rest of the top ten unchanged.
What will each of these stores do with the economic challenges in 2011?
Meijer continues to expand in the Chicago suburbs with plans to open small-format, grocery-focused stores this year in Berwyn and Melrose Park. Meijer operates 13 stores in the Chicago suburbs and three in Northwest Indiana.
As for this weekend, it appears that shoppers are not letting the economy effect their Valentine's Day spending.
Only than three months after joining the Walmart merchandising organization as an EVP, Duncan Mac Naughton has been named chief merchandising officer for the U.S. stores division. Prior to joining Walmart U.S. last fall, Mac Naughton had served as chief merchandising officer of Walmart Canada since 2009.