The formal features of a retail business unit are subject to permanent changes. Starting from the detected regularities therein, this paper‘s objective is to enrich an informat ional basis for a detection of new, more adequate forms. The paper initially analyzes the formal features of retail business units and their changeability. Furthermore, it also specially emphasizes the changeability of environmental factors pertaining to a retail business unit (market and competit ion technology, institutional conditions, and the like). The meaning of retail business units‘ form is discussed from the point of view of certain companies and/or economic activit ies, as well as from the point of view of an overall economy in certain country. Namely, the forms of retail business units, integrated in value chains, exert a significant influence on overall economic trends in the aforesaid country. Thus, a responsibility for retail business units‘ formation is born not only by the retailing companies but also by the institutional factors. In the Republic of Croatia (as well as in most transitional countries), the poblems in the format ion of retail business units are quantitatively observed in a discrepancy between sale areas and a level of overall economic development, as well as in an uns atisfactory retail structure (concerning the forms of retail business units) and an unsatisfactory level of vertical interconnection between retail business units.
