Vincent Mak

Professor of Marketing & Decision Sciences

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

My research interests include prosocial decisions, managerial and consumer behavioural decision making, pricing, experimental economics, and game theory. I’m interested in how people and firms make decisions as they interact with each other, and what economic and psychological factors influence those decisions.

Professional experience

Vincent is on the Editorial Review Board of the journal Production & Operations Management and is an Associate Editor of the journal Information Systems Research’s Special Issue on Analytical Creativity. He is currently a member of the Senior Leadership Team at Cambridge Judge Business School and has been the Vice Dean for Programmes & Research (2021-2023), Director (Associate Dean) of Programmes (2019-2021), and Deputy Director of Teaching (2016-2019) at the Business School. He was previously an award-winning 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 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.

Publications

Selected publications

Journal articles

Working papers

  • Rapoport, A. and Mak, V. (2019) “Strategic interactions in transportation networks.” In: Donohue, K., Katok, E. and Leider, S. (eds.) The handbook of behavioral operations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp.557-585
  • Zwick, R. and Mak, V. (2012) “Gaming with fairness: some conjectures on behavior in alternating offer bargaining experiments.” In: Bolton, G.E. and Croson, R.T.A. (eds.) The Oxford handbook of economic conflict resolution. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.91-107

Awards and honours

  • Cambridge Judge Business School Teaching Award, 2019
  • Faculty Activity Award (for contributions on research, teaching, and service), Cambridge Judge Business School, 2017/18
  • 3rd Prize, Innovation Management Best Paper Award, 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

News and insights

From burnout to AI and the US elections, faculty at Cambridge Judge Business School offer their hopes and fears for the year to come.

People pay more under pay-what-you-want systems when they pay afterwards if the product or service is highly valued, says study co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School.

World Case Teaching Day 2023 provides an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the ways in which Cambridge Judge Business School engages with the case teaching method.

Media coverage

Radio Cambridge 105: Cambridge Judge Business School study into Pay What You Want | 8 February 2023

Cambridge Judge Business School study into Pay What You Want

Vincent Mak, Professor of Marketing & Decision Sciences at Cambridge Judge Business School, has been interviewed from Radio Cambridge105, about his recent study regarding the pay-what-you-want models. “The study identifies a link between value of the offering and the obligation thus felt by the recipient, and this affects the amount of the payment,” says Vincent.

Poets & Quants | 22 November 2022

Major global ranking celebrates ‘world leading’ Cambridge Judge

Cambridge Judge Business School’s #1 ranking in the Research Excellence Framework in the UK was featured in a comprehensive article in leading business-school publication Poets & Quants. The publication interviewed Dean Mauro Guillén and Vice-Dean Vincent Mak about the School’s top ranking in the Business and Management Studies category of the REF, which is done every seven years by the UK’s higher education funding bodies.

BBC: You and Yours | 10 October 2022

Easylife Fine; Bogus Bags; Pay As You Can

Vincent Mak, Professor of Marketing & Decision Sciences at Cambridge Judge Business School, spoke on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme (min. 38) about Pay As You Can.

FindMBA, 1 March 2022
How business school research enriches the MBA student experience

Business Because, 7 October 2021
How can brands adapt to the post-pandemic consumer?

Executive courses, 213 May 2021
Programmes in mindfulness, inclusive and purpose-driven leadership take center-stage

Bangkok Post, 24 September 2019
Chulalongkorn and Cambridge emphasise corporate brand values

Yahoo Finance, 28 February 2018
Competition involving others can make people more competitive through ‘competition contagion’

Cambridge Independent, 15 March 2017
Sat-nav study reveals we’re creatures of habit

Phys.org, 25 January 2016
How to get teams to share information

Cambridge Business Magazine, 1 July 2015
Easterners can search too long for deals, study says

The Conversation, 22 May 2015
Are Asians more obsessed with a bargain hunt than Westerners?

Phys.org, 7 May 2015
Digital bargain hunters: Optimal online searching

My Science, 6 May 2015
Digital bargain hunters: optimal online searching

Stamford Advocate, 28 April 2015
Study reveals Easterners search too long for good deals after incurring ‘sunk costs’ from earlier search efforts

The Daily Telegraph, 22 November 2014
Online research leads to trouble and strife

The Economist/Which MBA?, 17 November 2014
The futile search for perfection

Wirtschafts Woche, 17 September 2014
When customers determine the price for a product

The Conversation, 3 September 2014
Why the butcher, the baker and the hotelier are adopting the honesty box

The Independent, 22 July 2014
Honesty box hotels – you decide how much you pay

The Times: Raconteur, 28 October 2013
Keep your customers happy by understanding ‘new’ loyalty

Top