Global retailing today is defined by paradox. Even as the Internet, social media and the widespread deployment of mobile telephony have brought the world closer, helping create a truly "global" consumer, renewed feelings of nationalism, and even tribalism, are surging around the world. And as retailing companies--digital and physical--seek to develop trade relations with other countries, the flow of goods available to them are subject to often draconian nationalistic tariffs, taxes, and regulation.
