Introduction

Abstract

Retailers are internationalizing increasingly. With the process of retail internationalization gaining momentum since the 1990s, retailing is increasingly becoming a global industry. Indeed, many of the world’s prominent retailers already derive a significant proportion of their sales from international operations (see Table A-1). This is the case for leading grocery retailers (e.g., Walmart, Carrefour, and Tesco) in the largest retail sector according to sales volumes, for leading fashion retailers (e.g., Inditex, H&M, and GAP) in the second largest retail sector, and also for service retailers (e.g., McDonald’s, KFC, and Starbucks) (see e.g., Swoboda, Foscht and Pennemann 2009). However, such global retailers become involved more and more locally in emerging countries and their success depends on local positioning because retailing originally began as a local business (Treadgold 1988).