Emerging Markets and Internationalization of Retail: The Case of BRIC Countries

Abstract The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the emerging markets and retail internationalization, with a special focus on the markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China, also known as BRIC countries. The paper relies on the fact that the emerging markets, especially the markets of BRIC countries, have recently attracted an increasing attention of the scientific and professional community, as well as international retail companies. After the economic crisis in 2008, the internationalization of retail, as a key business strategy, is changing its direction and form, in order to focus on the emerging markets. Based on the available secondary data sources considering the operations of the largest international retail companies and the attractiveness of the emerging market from 2014 to 2018, we test the hypotheses set in this research. One of the key hypotheses is that a certain number of international retail companies present on the BRIC country market is determined by its ranking on the list of the most attractive markets. We test this hypothesis by constructing a simple regression model for each country individually. Another key hypothesis is that the ranking of a BRIC country on the list of the most attractive markets is the result of various factors. We test this hypothesis using the method of descriptive statistics for each country individually. The obtained research results have economic validity and they fill a scientific niche in the research of the relationship between the attractiveness of the BRIC market and the internationalization of retail. In addition, the obtained results represent the basis for further research of this issue, given the large-scale changes caused by the global coronavirus pandemic.