Purpose Global trends like digitalization and verticalization increase the complexity within the retail industry and decrease the explanatory power of prevailing retail concepts. This paper responds to the call for new ways of understanding retailers’ business activities. The purpose of this paper is to structure and stimulate the emerging conceptual debate about retail business models (RBM) by developing a literature-based and empirically-substantiated generic retail business model framework (generic RBM). Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a systematic literature review and a qualitative study with 16 expert interviews in the German retail industry. Findings The paper identifies six core elements and respective sub-elements of a generic RBM. Contrasting the literature with empirical data, it confirms some common elements (e.g. “value proposition”) but invalidates others (e.g. “organization” or “governance”). The empirical findings add retail specifics like “horizontal integration,” “vertical integration” and “partners and networks” as core elements of a generic RBM. Originality/value The paper is the first to develop a generic RBM based on a systematic literature review and an empirical study across retailers. The resulting generic RBM can be used as a retail concept for systemizing and typifying the appearances of retailers in retailing theory. It can also be used for building, analyzing and comparing RBMs in retailing practice. The paper further provides a guideline for generic business model design with a hybrid approach based on literature and qualitative data.
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