Abstract: With the advent of smart grids and continuous restructuring of power industry,modern power systems have gradually evolved into complex cyber-physical systems which are characterized with high renewable energy penetrations,distributed facilities,advanced metering and communication technologies,as well as ever-increasing customer awareness.In an electricity retail market,these new development trends pose significant challenges for electricity retailers and call for innovative decision-making methods.Meanwhile,China has begun to establish competitive electricity retail markets in the new round of in-depth reforms for the power industry.In order to provide a beneficial reference for constructing complete competitive electricity retail markets in China,and also to help researchers and engineers have a better overview of the state-of-the-art on the business process and decision-making schemes of electricity retailers,this paper first introduces the development history of electricity retail markets around the world.Then,it elaborates the business process of electricity retailers in Australia and Finland,and surveys the latest progress on decision-making of electricity retailers,including retail energy forecasting,energy procurement strategies and retail pricing strategies for electricity retailers,and risk management in retail markets.Finally,some critical and open issues in this field are discussed.