In perspective of the generalized retail format, the paper analyses the status quo of the study on China’s retail formats based on the literature of CSSCI in recent ten years. Studies show that retail scholars make maturely research on overall retail formats, supermarket format, department store format, shopping mall formats in fields of format marketing, format operation and management, format innovation, while researches on other formats such as retail stores format, specialty stores format and food retail and service retail format relatively lag. As service economy is in the imminent, emergence of new retail format in large number makes the current research lag behind retail practice in China. The original retail format researches more stay on commodity retailing mainly within a narrow range, which to some extent hinders the research on the overall retail formats in width and depth. Retail experts should expand research fields of retail format and enrich the main content of traditional formats research for more comprehensive and deeper research on retail formats in China.