By Dr. Maurice Yeates, Samuel Emmard and Dr. Tony Hernandez

The CSCA’s annual listing of leading retailers in Canada provides a breakdown for both Retail Conglomerates (RCG) and the Retail Chains (RCH) they control (as ranked by total estimated retail sales). Why focus solely on the top 100 conglomerates and chains ranked by sales? The top 100 retailers in Canada include organizations with economies of scale that enable them to exert a significant influence on Canada’s retail economy. For example, the trend of the largest retailers getting bigger continues from the previous year.  In Fiscal 2019/2020 we find that the level of corporate concentration amongst Canada’s top 10 retail conglomerates continued to increase, while the concentration for the top 100 retail conglomerates as a group has declined as the industry is increasingly being impacted by online retail sales.