Professor of Marketing & Decision Sciences
Director of Programmes
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, search decisions, decisions in networks and queues, decisions in competitive environments, competitive strategies, game theory, and experimental economics. His recent projects include, for example, how consumers search for marketing offers, how managerial committees make decisions, 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
- 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
Selected publications
Here are a selection of Vincent Mak’s publications. Please see the “Selected publications” tab above for a more comprehensive list.
Mak, V., Seale, D.A., Rapoport, A. and Gisches, E.J. (2019) “Voting rules in sequential search by committees: theory and experiments.” Management Science, 65(9): 3949-4450 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3146)
KC, R.P., Kunter, M. and Mak, V. (2018) “The influence of a competition on non-competitors.” In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 115(11): 2716-2721 (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1717301115)
Research findings featured on Yahoo Finance
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 The Telegraph
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)
Journal articles
Rapoport, A., Mak, V. and Zwick, R. (2006) “Navigating congested networks with variable demand: experimental evidence.” Journal of Economic Psychology, 27(5): 648-666 (DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2006.06.001)
Mak, V. and Zwick, R. (2009) “‘Confidentially yours’: restricting information flow between trustees enhances trust-dependent transactions.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 70(1-2): 142-154 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2008.10.010)
Mak, V. and Zwick, R. (2010) “Investment decisions and coordination problems in a market with network externalities: an experimental study.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 76(3): 759-773 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2010.08.017)
Rapoport, A., Stein, W.E., Mak, V., Zwick, R. and Seale, D.A. (2010) “Endogenous arrivals in batch queues with constant or variable capacity.” Transportation Research Part B, 44(10): 1166-1185 (DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2010.01.005)
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)
Mak, V. and Rapoport, A. (2013) “The price of anarchy in social dilemmas: traditional research paradigms and new network applications.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 120(2): 142-153 (DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2012.06.006)
Mak, V. and Zwick, R. (2014) “Experimenting and learning with localized direct communication.” Experimental Economics, 17(2): 262-284 (DOI: 10.1007/s10683-013-9366-8)
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
Rapoport, A., Gisches, E.J. and Mak, V. (2014) “Distributed decisions in networks: laboratory study of routing splittable flow.” Production and Operations Management, 23(4): 314-331 (DOI: 10.1111/poms.12183)
Liu, C., Mak, V. and Rapoport, A. (2015) “Cost-sharing in directed networks: experimental study of equilibrium choice and system dynamics.” Journal of Operations Management, 39-40 (Special issue on System Dynamics: Emergence, Reinforcement, Adaptation and Traps): 31-47 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2015.07.004)
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., Gisches, E.J. and Rapoport, A. (2015) “Route vs. segment: an experiment on real-time travel information in congestible networks.” Production and Operations Management, 24(6): 947-960 (DOI: 10.1111/poms.12312)
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 The Telegraph
KC, R.P., Kunter, M. and Mak, V. (2018) “The influence of a competition on non-competitors.” In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 115(11): 2716-2721 (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1717301115)
Research findings featured on Yahoo Finance
Spann, M., Zeithammer, R., Bertini, M., Haruvy, E., Jap, S.D., Koenigsberg, O., Mak, V., Popkowski Leszczyc, P., Skiera, B. and Thomas, M. (2018) “Beyond posted prices: the past, present, and future of participative pricing mechanisms.” Customer Needs and Solutions, 5(1-2): 121-136 (DOI: 10.1007/s40547-017-0082-y)
Mak, V., Rapoport, A. and Gisches, E.J. (2018) “Dynamic pricing decisions and seller-buyer interactions under capacity constraints.” Games, 9(1): 10 (DOI: 10.3390/g9010010)
Mak, V., Seale, D.A., Gisches, E.J., Yang, R., Cheng, M., Moon, M. and Rapoport, A. (2018) “The Braess Paradox and coordination failure in directed networks with mixed externalities.” Production and Operations Management, 27(4): 717-733 (DOI: 10.1111/poms.12827)
Mak, V., Seale, D.A., Gisches, E.J., Rapoport, A., Cheng, M., Moon, M. and Yang, R. (2018) “A network ridesharing experiment with sequential choice of transportation mode.” Theory and Decision, 85(3-4): 407-433 (DOI: 10.1007/s11238-018-9663-y)
Rapoport, A., Qi, H., Mak, V. and Gisches, E.J. (2019) “When a few undermine the whole: a class of social dilemmas in ridesharing.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 166: 125-137 (DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.08.015)
Li, K.T., Tang, W., Wu, D., Huang, W., Wu, F., Lee, A., Feng, H., Pan, S.W., Han, L., Mak, V., Yang, L. and Tucker, J.D. (2019) “Pay-it-forward strategy to enhance uptake of dual gonorrhea and chlamydia testing among men who have sex with men in China: a pragmatic, quasi-experimental study.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 19(1): 76-82 (DOI: 10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30556-5)
Mak, V., Seale, D.A., Rapoport, A. and Gisches, E.J. (2019) “Voting rules in sequential search by committees: theory and experiments.” Management Science, 65(9): 3949-4450 (DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3146)
Chark, R., Mak, V. and Muthukrishnan, A.V. (2020) “The premium as informational cue in insurance decision making.” Theory and Decision (DOI: 10.1007/s11238-019-09732-5) (published online Nov 2019)
Book chapters
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
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
