These 16 companies control almost everything you buy

Powerful companies create brands and products that we might not know are theirs.

Companies' signature brands add to their annual revenues and provide an edge to competition.

To determine how powerful each company is, we factored together fiscal 2014 revenue, the number of employees, and press mentions on Google News over the past year.

Here is a list of retail companies that own brands and products that we use every day.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.