America's Top 100 Retailers: Competitors and Trend-Setters

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Last week, the National Retail Federation (NRF) released its annual list of the nation's top 100 retailers. It's the 2012 edition, based on 2011 data.

If you sort the data on the basis of 2011 sales, Wal-Mart(WMT) takes the top spot. It has considerable competition in the top five and throughout the list from companies such as Target(TGT) and Costco(COST) .

Sort the list using revenue growth from 2010 to 2011 and Amazon.com(AMZN) owns the top spot. If you stop reading less than a quarter of the way through the NRF's press release, you might click away thinking Amazon has no other competition in the top 100.

Actually, the NRF uses the word "peers," not competition. NRF contends several companies in the top 100 have no "peers" accompanying them on the list. Amazon is one.

Private or government entities on the "no peers" list include Toys "R" Us, Army and Air Force Exchange Service and potential future IPO Michaels, a large arts and crafts chain.

In addition to Amazon, the NRF calls out Gamestop(GME) and home shopping network QVC (owned by Liberty Media(LMCA) ) as some of the public companies without "peers" on the top 100 retailer rundown.

Could somebody please tell me why the NRF singles these companies out?

Maybe they're into semantics.

Peer: One that is of equal standing with another : equal :especially : one belonging to the same societal group especially based on age, grade, or status.

Competition: The effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms

In business, you cannot draw a distinction between those two words. Other than in casual usage, I am not sure much of a distinction in meaning even exists.

For instance, while I argue that Amazon did not build a tablet to compete with Apple(AAPL) , the two companies clearly compete and are peers.