Big-Box Stores Rule Top 10 List

What's gradually being lost in the grocery store industry is the kind of cultlike enthusiasm that shoppers once had for their own regional chains, dotted across the country. There are still old-style favorites in the form of private companies like Wegmans in upstate New York, and just recently in the Washington market, and Publix in Florida. But the character and excitement once offered by local chains such as Giant Food here and Dominick's in Chicago have in many cases been replaced by a far less inspired corporate mentality after being purchased by enormous corporate parents.

"Big makes it harder to be great," Liebmann said.

More broadly, if the top 10 list is a window into what we're really buying, it's not especially interesting stuff. There are no fashion companies on the list. No department stores. No specialty stores. It's largely things we need: lettuce, shampoo, nails, paper towels, arthritis medicine and car batteries.

"It seems like we might just be a more practical bunch than we like to admit," said Rick Gallagher, publisher of Stores magazine, which is put out by the National Retail Federation. That picture, he said, is at odds with the "orgy of shopping every weekend" for which America has a reputation.

And there's something else this list says about us that defies conventional wisdom. "Despite everything that we might say about how much we value customer service, look at this list," Gallagher said. "When push comes to shove, people are going to choose low prices over service."

What we do instead is simply complain bitterly at every turn about how terrible the service is at American retailers -- which has made complaining, Gallagher points out only partly in jest, part of the fun of shopping today.

What is perhaps most important about the top 10 list, though, is what it says about where we're going. It might not seem so at first blush, but the list does show that creativity in marketing and merchandising and store formats can pay off.

Ten years ago, Target (No. 4) was but a division of the department-store-driven company Dayton Hudson, and now it is one of the most influential design retailers in the country, exposing millions of consumers to high-quality, interesting, unique merchandise, even if it is relatively cheap. Costco, too, was not on the list in the mid-1990s, but has moved up to fifth place largely because of its terrific merchandising, which keeps shoppers excited and eager to spend. And the drugstore chain Walgreens (No. 9), expanding into Maryland and Virginia but not in the Washington area, is among the best in the industry, with constant reinvention of its merchandise to appeal to changing tastes, and a willingness to try new store formats.

Even Sears, the nostalgia entry on the list in sixth place, has been bold in trying new things, such as buying catalog retailer Land's End and aggressively marketing to ethnic consumers. And Lowe's, one could argue, has moved into 10th place by doing what No. 2 retailer Home Depot does, only being more creative about it.

So maybe what looks, on first impression, like a rather boring list of the biggest retailers contains a bit of excitement after all. If only we could just put some life back in the grocery industry. . . .

If you have a question, comment or concern about what you see when you shop, send an e-mail to sellingus@washpost.com.