Vincent Mak

Reader in Marketing & Decision Sciences
Director of the MPhil in Strategy, Marketing & Operations Programme
Deputy Director of Teaching

BA, MMath, MSc (University of Cambridge), PhD (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Research interests

Vincent's research lies in how people and firms make strategic decisions as they interact with each other, and what economic and psychological factors influence those decisions. His research interests cover pricing, consumer search behaviour, decisions in networks and queues, competitive strategies, game theory, and experimental economics. His recent projects include, for example, how consumers search for marketing offers, how managerial committees make decisions as a group, and how R&D managers can be incentivised to align their interests with their company's.

Subject group: Marketing

Professional experience

Vincent is on the Editorial Review Board of the journal Production & Operations Management. He was previously a case writer at the University of Hong Kong's Centre for Asian Business Cases (now Asia Case Research Centre), producing over 20 business cases which have been used worldwide. His recent consulting work includes a study of online/offline retail prices and price comparison websites, as well as a consumer survey study on the functioning of the market for Internet access, both commissioned by the European Commission. He has also worked as a columnist, journalist, editor, and freelance writer/broadcaster in the Hong Kong media specialising in classical music and the arts.

Previous appointments

Vincent was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology prior to joining Cambridge Judge Business School.

Awards & honours

• 3rd Prize, Best-Paper-Award Innovation Management, for the paper "Resource allocation decisions under imperfect evaluation and organizational dynamics" (with Jochen Schlapp and Nektarios Oraiopoulos), Strascheg Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SIIE), EBS Business School, 2015
• National Research Article Award (Business Administration Category - Merit) for the paper "Culture moderates biases in search decisions" (with Jake A. Pattaratanakun), National Institute of Development Administration of Thailand, 2015
• Program Committee Member, Asia-Pacific Association for Consumer Research Conference, 2015
• Overseas Research Attachment Award, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2008
• First runner-up, the Seventh Asia-Pacific Case Writing Competition, 2002

Selected publications

Here are a selection of Vincent Mak's publications. Please see the "Selected publications" tab above for a more comprehensive list.

Pattaratanakun, J.A. and Mak, V. (2015) "Culture moderates biases in search decisions." Psychological Science, 26(8): 1229-1240 (DOI: 10.1177/0956797615583979)
Research findings featured in The Conversation, Phys.org and My Science

Schlapp, J., Oraiopoulos, N. and Mak, V. (2015) "Resource allocation decisions under imperfect evaluation and organizational dynamics." Management Science, 61(9): 2013-2280 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2014.2083)

Mak, V., Zwick, R., Rao, A.R. and Pattaratanakun, J.A. (2015) "'Pay-what-you-want' as threshold public good provision." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 127: 30-43 (DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.11.004)
Research findings featured in The Independent, The Conversation and Wirtschafts Woche

Mak, V., Rapoport, A., Gisches, E.J. and Han, J. (2014) "Purchasing scarce products under dynamic pricing: an experimental investigation." Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 16(3): 425-438 (DOI: 10.1287/msom.2014.0480)

Mak, V., Rapoport, A. and Seale, D.A. (2014) "Sequential search by groups with rank-dependent payoffs: an experimental study." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 124(2): 256-267 (DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.03.004)
Research findings featured in The Economist/Which MBA? and The Daily Telegraph

Mak, V., Rapoport, A. and Gisches, E.J. (2012) "Competitive dynamic pricing with alternating offers: theory and experiment." Games and Economic Behavior, 75(1): 250-264 (DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2011.08.018)