  An acoustic oscillation of the primeval photon-baryon fluid around the
decoupling time imprints a characteristic scale in the galaxy distribution
today, known as the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale. Several on-going
and/or future galaxy surveys aim at detecting and precisely determining the BAO
scale so as to trace the expansion history of the universe. We consider
nonlinear and redshift-space distortion effects on the shifts of the BAO scale
in $k$-space using perturbation theory. The resulting shifts are indeed
sensitive to different choices of the definition of the BAO scale, which needs
to be kept in mind in the data analysis. We present a toy model to explain the
physical behavior of the shifts. We find that the BAO scale defined as in
Percival et al. (2007) indeed shows very small shifts ($\lesssim$ 1%) relative
to the prediction in {\it linear theory} in real space. The shifts can be
predicted accurately for scales where the perturbation theory is reliable.
