Since the mid-to-late 1990s, retail globalization has intensified, and a growing multidisciplinary literature profiles these dynamics. This chapter provides a snapshot of current levels of retail globalization, before briefly reviewing the literature on the drivers and dynamics of retail globalization from the late 1990s onwards. The analysis then advances current understandings in two ways. Firstly, the evidence on the impacts of globalization is reviewed to highlight that, far from being an inevitable process of rapid retail transnational corporation-led modernization, the outcomes have been highly variable and uneven, with profound variations across different national contexts. Secondly, focusing on the period since the global economic crisis of 2007–08, a new era of globalized distribution is characterized in which economic crisis and profound Internet-induced structural shifts have changed the dynamics of the process. To conclude, an economic geographical research agenda that builds upon these two dimensions is mapped out.Chapter keywords