Buy ourselves

The Internet is a good place for growers and manufacturers to promote their goods whether they deal directly with the public or no.
Any type of seller can pipe directly to the consumer or promote a product that their retail customers source from them.

II

We're all consumers/customers/purchasers even if we don't dabble in trade. There's few truly self-sufficient.
I have always appreciated being able to get my hands on things I want to buy and at a good price.

The science and the political theory, communication studies and so forth are covered in other blogs and disciplines. When I went looking for buyers, as it were, I turned up all sorts, starting with property buyers and homebuyers. Apparently the Brits are the biggest buyers of land in Spain.
Conducting a search for 'biggest buyers' does eventually take you to the sharemarket but that's for next time.

Consumed

1. United States of America
2. China
3. Japan
4. Germany 
5. United Kingdom
6. France 
7. Brazil
8. Italy
9. India
10.  Russia
11. Canada
12. Mexico
13. Australia
14. Spain
15. South Korea
16. Turkey
17. Indonesia
18. Argentina
19. Netherlands
20. Nigeria

[largest consumer markets c. 2013, Brexit and a potential Trump presidency could have seismic effects on consumer confidence and/or have an impact on the availability of consumer items, three years on]

Online one

The five largest online retailers

1. Alibaba
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. Staples
5. Wal-Mart

Let's run through the figures

I don't know how enterprising you are but, chances are, we are a long way off starting or heading a company with a market cap of 586 billion dollars. That doesn't mean we can't learn from Tim Cook or the legacy of Steve Jobs.

Contemplating having $3,420.3 billion dollars in assets without a large swathe of the population elsewhere knowing much, if anything, about ICBC. That's sneaking under the radar, bankster style

$53.7 billion profit and the brand is pervasive. Fascinating that common words like apple keep bobbing up; the Beatles having also used it. In the newest financial year figures, Google is under the new spread moniker Alphabet, and Facebook and Amazon Inc have made an entrance into the top ten public companies.

$482.1 billion in sales and you so walmart
$14.7 billion of that taken as profit and you still walmart

II

What exactly are the sort of assets held by China Construction Bank?
Why has no one mentioned Fannie Mae?

Value, form, money

Largest companies by market value

1. Apple
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Berkshire Hathaway
4. Google
5. Microsoft
6. PetroChina
7. Wells Fargo
8. Johnson & Johnson
9. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
10. Novartis

The Profit has spoken

1. Apple
2. ExxonMobil
3. Wells Fargo
4. Microsoft
5. J.P. Morgan Chase
6. Berkshire Hathaway
7. Chevron
8. Walmart Stores
9. Johnson & Johnson
10. General Electric

Speaking of assets

The largest banks in the world based on total assets

1. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
2. China Construction Bank Corporation
3. Agricultural Bank of China
4. HSBC Holdings
5. Bank of China
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co.
7. BNP Paribas
8. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group
9. Bank of America
10. Crédit Agricole Group

Correction in the market

The Wikipedia list, as with other lists, bases its ranking on revenue but this is by no means the only marker of success. Forbes takes the most comprehensive approach: 'world’s largest, most powerful public companies, as measured by revenues, profits, assets and market value.'

1. ICBC
2. China Construction Bank
3. Agricultural Bank of China
4. Berkshire Hathaway
5. JP Morgan Chase
6. Bank of China
7. Wells Fargo
8. Apple
9. ExxonMobil
10. Toyota Motor

Wal-Mart is  #15

CEOver all

1. Doug McMillon
2. Wang Tianpu
3. Wang Yilin
4. Amin H. Nasser
5. Liu Zhenya
6. Lee Kun-hee
7. Ben van Beurden
8. Rex W. Tillerson
9. Ian Taylor
10. Nizar Al-Adsani
11. Matthias Müller
12. Tim Cook
13. Akio Toyoda
14. Bob Dudley
15. Ivan Glasenberg
16. Patrick Pouyanne
17. Warren Buffett
18. John Hammergren
19. Sheng Guangzu
20. Greg Garland

Company towns

1. Bentonville, Arkansas
2. Beijing
3. Dahran
4. Suwon
5. The Hague and London
6. Irving, Texas
7. Rotterdam and Geneva
8. Al Shuwaikh
9. Wolfsburg
10. California
11. Aichi
12. Baar
13. Courbevoie
14. Omaha, Nebraska
15. Houston, Texas

In the company of giants, Giant Companies

1. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
2. Sinopec Group
3. China National Petroleum Corporation
4. Saudi Aramco 
5. State Grid
6. Samsung
7. Royal Dutch Shell
8. ExxonMobil
9. Vitol
10. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation
11. Volkswagen
12. Apple
13. Toyota
14. BP
15. Glencore
16. Total
17. Berkshire Hathaway
18. McKesson
19. China Railway 
20. Phillips 66

Shop absorption

The trouble with detailing retail. commenting on commerce and talking shop is that you run the risk of finding a juicy link that then finds all unwary blog readers confronted with the same "Join my site" enjoinder.

This happened to me with the smallest shop clickbait and maybe their focus says something about their marketing approach.

If you want to go to the smallest coffee shop or smallest Ikea shop then that's freedom of choice.

Arc Aid

I came back empty handed on my arcade wander so can't say much beyond the fact a shopping arcade in Japan is mentioned more than once for staggering length,

Ye olde shoppe

Boxford Stores has been around since 1420 when it was a warehouse buying and selling wool and fabric. Since then the site has been home to butchers, grocers, ironmongers and drapers

Rows by any other name

Chester Rows is likely to be the oldest continually operating shopping mall/centre in the world, dating back at least to the thirteenth century. Different rows specialised in different goods.

What's in store

Really, it would be hard to go past retailindustry.about.com which pegs the largest of many store types, declaring that Macy's Department Store in New York was the largest store for many years but has been comprehensively overtaken by Shinsegae Centumcity Department Store in Busan, South Korea. At 3.163 million square feet in one retail location, it is more than a million square feet larger than Macy's in Herald Square and larger than many shopping centres and malls.

Brought to Book

The three contested book shop giants are Barnes and Noble in New York, The World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto and Powell's Book Store in Portland, Oregon.

Foothold

Macy's

Selfridge's

Level Shoe District

Super-size Convenience

Buc-ee's

Chapter two

World's Best Clothing Stores: Fashionista Ranking

Levels of Custom

Golden Resources at the centre

• Sephora
• Starbucks
• Bose
• Love
• Dish 100
• Sasa
• Folli Follie
• Innisfree
• ECCO
• Personal Point
• Teenie Weenie
• Nautica
• Minnetonka
• MAP by BeLLE
• Levi's
• Hush Puppies
• Guess
• Evisu
• Calvin Klein
• Adidas
• UNIQLO
• Under Armour
• Arc'teryx
• Paul Frank
• Nike
• New Balance
• Mammut
• Lalabobo
• Hotwind
• Elegant Prosper
• Zhang Yi Yuan Tea Shop
• China Photo Shop
• Royal Tea Shanfang
• Tongrentang pharmacy
• Mamas&Papas
• MLB KIDS
• mothercare
• Daoxiang brand
• Parsons Music

Critical mau ling

We in Australia, while having gone to a complex perhaps to watch "Mallrats" or "Mall Cops 1 or 2", still refer to them as shopping centres. Hay Street Mall in Perth is a paved over block of one street where - other than service vehicles - it is pedestrian only. Martin Place, while differently named is the same arrangement in Sydney. The distinction is less clear the more Forrest Place (again in Perth) became Forrest Chase but it was once a pedestrian mall in the Australian sense, with balcony shops on one side.

The more startling thing to note is that the shopping centres are in communist and theocratic states, not capitalist countries. The Saudi Arabia supercenter is in Mecca
Philippines fills the Wiki list of giant shopping malls and China dominates here as it does in so many fields. Though I'm beginning to doubt this whole Great Mall of China thing as other lists concur with list 25 in placing the New South China Mall in that coveted spot and remarking that it is the place that remains 99% untenanted.

Iran has two in the list and Malaysia and Thailand feature prominently while Turkey is represented by the Istanbul Cevahir.

II

The lists use gross leasable area as measurement. Otherwise the largest would be the Dubai Mall.