Over the past few years, lists of “Top Retail Influencers ” have been proliferating. All kinds of vendors, associations and others seem to have their own algorithms for determining who the best are and they publish them with great fanfare and excitement.

Almost always, more than half the people on the list(s) tend to be head-scratchers: “Who are these people, and how do they influence our industry? ” comes to mind every time. Are those who report on the news and gather a lot of eyeballs really “influencers? ” And is that influence good, or bad?

When I was a little girl, my mother would declare various people “bad influences ” on me. In truth, I was tarred by the same brush by the parents of others (my childhood is an interesting story for another day).

I find myself on some of those retail influencer lists, and omitted from others. In fact, enough of them have come out lately, many with new head-scratcher names on them that I was sort of forced to start really meditating on the concept. Following are the results of those meditations.

Can a reporter be a retail influencer? I suppose it depends. The person who coined the phrase “Retail Apocalypse ” and those who have used the title in headlines around store closings and job destruction are certainly influencers. Unfortunately, they are bad influences. The concept served no value beyond scaring the bejeezus out of retailers and creating of late the counter-movement “There is no retail apocalypse. Show us your data please. ” Doh. IHL and RSR have been beating that drum for more than a year.

A reporter who writes a piece on last minute labor scheduling certainly is an influencer. Many states have now passed laws disallowing the practice. That’s a goodthing. But was the Wall Street Journal reporter who went to a conference on Workforce Management, was given the red carpet treatment and some solid information and then decided to build her story around one disgruntled salesperson in Langhorne, PA a good influence? No, she (maybe it was a he…I don’t recall), was a really bad influence. It was a bogus article from the get-go.

Can a tech vendor be a retail influencer? That’s an interesting question. I suppose if I roll back the clock a long time, and remember the first merchandise planning systems put out by Terry D’Onofrio (MAPS) on one hand and the late Steve Beck (Arthur) on the other I’d have to say they were retail influencers. Ditto Chuck Miller with his MMS allocation system. They built an industry and changed, more or less, the way people do things. Others have followed, and the more I think about it, the longer the list gets.

Many people (even other vendors!) say that DemandWare (now SalesForce Commerce Cloud) was the company that proved the Cloud was a viable concept in retail. That’s a good influencer. Cloud adoption has come hard to our industry, but it is coming.

But sheer “mass ” does not an influencer make. Successful vendors may not be influencers. In fact, they might be the ones who get influenced. That’s not the same.

Can the former leader of a somewhat unsuccessful large retailer be an “influencer? “ Nope. Not in my opinion. On the other hand, there are those who really do change the way things are done. Frank Blake? He’s a retail influencer. Hubert Joly, definitely. Others, who have departed the industry? Nope. Not if they didn’t leave things better than they found them.

And that brings us to the final and magic question for me. Can analysts like those at RSR, etc. be influencers? And if so, are they good or bad influencers? Straight up, I believe analysts are definitely influencers, and important ones.

With regard to RSR, I sure hope we’ve had some positive influence on our industry over the past decade-plus. After all, it’s part of our mission statement: “To elevate the conversation around retail technology to a strategic, business level. ”

We’re not the only ones. Each in their own way, RSR, IHL, Cathy Hotka, Leslie Hand and her gang at IDC, Sucharita Malpuru and others have been positive influencers in the world of retail. And Scott Galloway is the icon of the moment.

Put more simply, most analysts and their firms are good influences on both tech vendors and retailers. Some are not.

All this is by way of saying that the term “influencer ” is getting thrown around way too much. It’s some weird combination of popularity contest and quantification of reach, rather than value. While I may love it when I’m picked, I’m not dumb enough to believe my own press.

So I’m going to end with a question: Who are YOUR most important influencers? It could really just be your boss and mentor. But who do you think really matters to the industry today? Who makes it change? Who makes it grow? And who is riding on past glories. Let me know!