Failure in international retailing: research propositions

Whilst retail internationalization practice has a long history, academic research into retail internationalization is a more recent phenomenon. We argue in this paper that our continuing conceptualization of retail internationalization would be aided by incorporating aspects of failure in international retailing. In internationalization practice, failure would seem to be a common occurrence, whereas in academia, such failure has been almost routinely ignored. Here, we attempt to define and conceptualize failure in international retailing. We then put forward a series of propositions that might serve as a guide to future research on failure in retail internationalization.