Broadline Retail Data Provider: 21 Cataloged Datasets · Head-to-head
NRF Research & Insights (National Retail Federation) vs AGC Construction Data Hub (Materials Prices, Employment, Spending, State Fact Sheets)
Which broadline retail data provider: 21 cataloged datasets data fits your job: NRF Research & Insights, or AGC Construction Data Hub. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
NRF Research & Insights
AGC Construction Data Hub
Coverage, side by side
| NRF Research & Insights | AGC Construction Data Hub | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | United States for the Top 100 and Hot 25; worldwide cut for the Top 50 Global; state-level economic impact figures | United States national totals, fact sheets for all 50 states plus DC, metro-level employment detail |
| Temporal | Annual ranking editions with archives back to 2020; economic contribution study dated March 2024 | Price tables spanning 2021 through the latest month; 2025-vintage fact sheets; cumulative changes referenced to February 2020 |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| NRF Research & Insights | AGC Construction Data Hub | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | NRF, the world's largest retail trade association, publishing research compiled with Kantar and PwC | AGC, the Associated General Contractors of America, whose economics office compiles federal statistics |
| Subject lens | Company scoreboard: who sells the most, grows the fastest and reaches furthest internationally | Cost ledger: what construction materials, labor and projects cost, state by state |
| Geographic coverage | United States for the Top 100 and Hot 25; worldwide cut for the Top 50 Global; state-level economic impact figures | United States national totals, fact sheets for all 50 states plus DC, metro-level employment detail |
| Temporal coverage | Annual ranking editions with archives back to 2020; economic contribution study dated March 2024 | Price tables spanning 2021 through the latest month; 2025-vintage fact sheets; cumulative changes referenced to February 2020 |
| Detail level | One row per ranked company per list, with rank, sales, growth and geographic mix | One row per BLS series per table, with year-average, year-to-latest-month and since-February-2020 changes |
| Formats | Ranking tables rendered as structured HTML, plus the economic-impact report issued as a PDF | Compiled price, spending and employment tables and state fact sheets issued as PDFs, with an outlook deck |
| Scale | 175 ranked companies per year across three lists (100 + 25 + 50) | Roughly 100-plus price and cost series across seven tables, 51 state fact sheets, an archive of economic briefs |
| Best for | Competitive benchmarking, market-share sizing, retailer growth screens | Input-cost inflation tracking, construction payroll and spending analysis, state market sizing |
What each does better
NRF Research & Insights
A scoreboard with relative position built in. Three lists cover 175 companies a year - the Top 100 by domestic retail sales, the Hot 25 by year-over-year growth, the Top 50 Global by points - so standing arrives with the data rather than being derived.
A revenue-only league table cannot produce that inversion - see retailer rankings.
Macro weight behind the micro ranks. Beside the lists sits the PwC economic contribution study: retail as a $5.3 trillion annual GDP contribution and 55 million US jobs, broken out to state level - see economic impact study.
AGC Construction Data Hub
Series IDs instead of labels. Because every row carries its official BLS code, AGC's tables join against any other federal-statistics panel without fuzzy matching - the join key is printed on the row.
Where they're equivalent
More than their subjects suggest. Both field dictionaries were verified during research, and both records post 7/10 against the catalog's 7.81 average. Both come from American trade associations - the retailer's side and the contractor's side of the same consumer economy. Both compress their subject into a deliberately short table: eleven fields and seven, not hundreds. And both are compilations rather than primary measurement: NRF commissions Kantar and PwC, AGC repackages Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau series. Where they stop being equivalent is the unit - one counts companies, the other counts commodities.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they are different instruments pointed at opposite ends of the same checkout.
Take NRF Research & Insights if your question contains a competitor. Where does a retailer rank, who grew fastest last year, which chains sell globally versus domestically, how large is retail's payroll footprint in Ohio - anything answered by a league table. Accept that the grain is annual and company-level: no stores, no SKUs, no weeks.
Accept that the rows are materials and geographies, never companies: no firm appears anywhere in the tables.
Sample both, pick by fit. See NRF Research & Insights · See AGC Construction Data Hub
Or take both in one feed
Yes - they stack because they sit on opposite sides of the same transaction.
Two alignments decide whether the merge holds. First, identifiers: NRF keys to company names while AGC keys to BLS series codes and states, so the bridge is thematic rather than keyed - a shared calendar of periods plus an external mapping from retail categories to construction inputs. Second, tempo: annual company rows against monthly index changes, so any joined artifact should aggregate the panel to annual before merging, or timestamp which ranking vintage it used. Browse the rest of the shelf at the broadline retail data hub.
Datadory ships either record alone or both merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is AGC Construction Data Hub better than NRF Research & Insights?
Better at different jobs. NRF owns position: 175 companies a year ranked by sales, growth and international reach across three Kantar-compiled lists. One tells you what inputs did; the other tells you who won.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground?
Barely. Both are American, both come from trade associations, and both lead with a year-over-year percent change. But their rows never meet: an NRF row is a company (Walmart, $575.99B, rank 1); an AGC row is a commodity or a geography (lumber and plywood, +38.1 percent since February 2020). There is no shared key - joining them takes a retail-category-to-construction-input mapping, not a merge column.
Which dataset reaches further back?
Different kinds of depth. NRF's ranking editions archive back to 2020, enough to rebuild several years of the Top 100, Hot 25 and Top 50 Global. NRF hands you more vintages; AGC hands you more months.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one calendar, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its verified field dictionary (eleven documented fields on the NRF side, seven in the AGC tables) with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. The joining work is the retail-category-to-construction-input crosswalk, handled in the merge. Or take both in one feed.