Navigating the Retailing Frontier through Academic and Practitioner Collaboration

Retailing academics and practitioners must develop close, collaborative relationships, which might involve various, meaningful efforts to assist the other side of the collaboration while also furthering their own respective objectives. Only through such collaborations can retailing ensure sufficient research rigor and relevance to advance the field and expand its reach to nonacademic audiences. To achieve some innovative insights on why and how academics and practitioners can work together, a thought leadership conference was organized at the Walton College of Business (University of Arkansas), and one of its key outcomes is this special issue. All the entries in this special issue were crafted by teams of academics and practitioners, working together to describe new frontiers in retailing. They worked collaboratively for more than a year on topical, timely, relevant topics for today's technology-based era. The meaningful results should provide inspiration for more collaborations, pursued by both sides, with the support of university administrators and corporate executive leadership. Without the support of both, bridging the gap between research and practice is not possible.