1 - New trends in the world retail industry

Abstract

This chapter discusses the new trends in the world retail industry. The most important development in global retailing in recent years has been retailing concentration and globalization. The maturity of retailing in developed countries has caused retailing concentration and made Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) the main path for corporate growth. Retailers are becoming larger in size while smaller in numbers. To develop opportunities, some retailers take internationalization entering foreign markets, especially emerging markets. During their internationalization, cultural proximity and geographic proximity are often the key issues for choosing the market entered for low operation risks and easy operation model transfer. Meanwhile, compared with other industries, the globalization and concentration of retailing are just in their infancy, which may provide retailers from developing countries with more opportunities to catch up in this industry than other industries. In addition, there are some other significant trends in retailing, such as the diversification of retailers, the acceleration of retail format evolution, the fast development of Private Label (PL) products, and so on.