Introduction: Transnational retail and the global economy

The fastest retail-system transformation in history has beensweeping across the emerging markets of East Asia, Central andEastern Europe, and Latin America over the past decade withprofound impacts on economies and societies in those regions.Conceptualized by researchers in development studies and agriculturaleconomics as the ‘supermarket revolution in developingcountries’ (see, for example, Reardon et al., 2003; Reardon,2005; Reardon and Hopkins, 2006; Humphrey, 2007; Reardon etal., 2007), that transformation has been driven not only bydemand-side forces such as urbanization and income growth inthe emerging markets, but also by supply-side forces such