• by Sarah Mahoney , July 1, 2011

The National Retail Federation just released its latest ranking of the 100 largest U.S. retailers -- and yes, Walmart, Kroger and Target are still in the top three spots. And yes, the entire top 10 is virtually unchanged from last year.

But the big news, the group says, is that Amazon is moving fast. Powered in part by sales of the Kindle, it zoomed from No. 26 to No. 19 on this year's list, with U.S. sales climbing 46.2% to $18.5 billion. And tech fueled another seismic power shift, with Apple Stores jumping more than 30 spots -- moving to No. 21 from No. 52, with U.S. sales advancing 32.3% percent to $18 billion.

(The report, compiled by Kantar Retail and sponsored by Verizon, ranks stores by U.S. sales only.)

After Walmart, Kroger, and Target, Walgreens, Home Depot, Costco, CVS Caremark, Lowe's, Best Buy and Sears Holdings filled out the top 10. (Best Buy and Sears swapped positions this year, and were the only chains among the top 10 that showed a decline in 2010, with U.S. sales slipping 0.3% and 2.2%, respectively.)

Stores in the top 10 spent much of the year tinkering with formats, it says, with Walmart making headlines with its Express, and Target gaining traction with its P-fresh rollout.

"One of the keys to retail survivorship in the U.S. is diversity, particularly in the variety of retail footprints that populate the retail landscape," says Bryan Gildenberg, chief knowledge officer, Kantar Retail, in the trade group's release. "This year's top 10 features retailers that operate in six different core formats and that in aggregate runs everything from non-store retail to convenience stores to massive supercenters."

There are two newcomers to this year's list: True Value (#26) and Ace Hardware (#36), the report says, are beneficiaries of the struggling housing market and smaller do-it-yourself projects.

The report is published in the latest issue of Stores, the NRF's magazine.