Retail buildings can provide energy flexibility to the grid with the possibility of load shifting and building automation systems. Demand response is a collective innovation in the smart grid domain. Various stakeholders should be involved in the demand response activities to ensure the success. The owners or senior management of retail buildings need to consider the stakeholders who are directly influenced by the demand response participation, e.g. customers and employees. Meanwhile, demand response activities are influenced by various factors, such as energy market structure, policy, etc. Therefore, this paper investigates the demand response readiness for retail buildings with three aspects: energy control preferences, stakeholder engagement, and cross-national differences. A questionnaire is designed and collected with store managers in Denmark (N=51) and the Philippines (N=36). The result shows that: 1) retail stores are much readier to participate in the implicit demand response by manual energy control compared to the utility control or building automation. Meanwhile, store managers have significant concerns about business activities and indoor lighting compared to other aspects; 2) the statistically significant influential factors for retail stores to participate in the demand response are related to whether the DR participation matches the company goals, influences business operation, and whether retail stores are lack of related knowledge; 3) retail stores believe that stakeholders should be informed about the DR activities but not involved in; 4) there are significant differences regarding the energy control preferences and concerns between retail stores in Denmark and the Philippines, but no significant difference regarding the stakeholder engagement.