Electronic retailing, also known as e-Tailing, deals with selling products and services online via the World Wide Web. It presents both established and new retail firms with enormous managerial challenges. Even common retail terms like "shelf space", "markets", "competitors" and "customers" often need to be re-defined for this new domain.

Using original content as a catalyst for in-depth dialogue, this Round Table of e-Tailing pacesetters, prominent thinkers and scholars focused on several essential questions, including:

• How do companies overcome traditional retailing mindsets for entering and successfully competing in the new e-Tailing arena?;
  
  
• What are the managerial implications of e-Tailing for companies rooted in the "brick and mortar" world?;
  
  
• What are the key managerial imperatives for de novo firms operating primarily in digital space?; and
  
  
• How can a company best leverage a possibly new buyer-seller relationship that is emerging in the e-Tailing environment?
  
  

Industry and academic speakers and panelists included:

• Tom Cahill, Vice President of Electronic Commerce, Chase Manhattan;
  
  
• Simon Clark, CFO/Vice President of Operations, TheStreet.com;
  
  
• Jeff Leviten, Senior VP of Strategy and New Business Development, Staples, Inc.;
  
  
• Professor Ananth Raman, Harvard Business School;
  
  
• Elizabeth VanStory, Vice President, Office Depot Online;
  
  
• Randy Wiele, Vice President of Electronic Commerce Services, EDS; and
  
  
• Nina Ziv, VP of Technology Strategy and Planning, Merrill Lynch.
  
  

Institute and faculty speakers, panelists and moderators included:

Professor Mel Horwitch, Director, Institute for Technology and Enterprise, Chair, Department of Management, Polytechnic University;

Ziv Navoth, Executive Director, Institute for Technology and Enterprise; and

Professor Bharat Rao, Department of Management, Polytechnic University.

Additional contributions included an interview conducted by Bharat Rao with Lauren Freedman, Director of the e-Tailing Group.

Related article: "Developing an effective e-Tailing strategy", authored by Professor Bharat Rao and based in part on this Round Table, published in Issue 2, 1999 of EM - Electronic Markets