SUNGTAK HONG
London Business School
Regent’s Park, London,
United Kingdom
NW1 4SA
Mobile: +44 (0)75 3088 0310
Fax: +44 (0)20 7000 7001
Email: [email protected]
Web: http://phd.london.edu/shong.phd2010
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Marketing, London Business School, UK
(Expected) 2016
M.Sc. Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
2009
B.A. Economics, Sogang University, Korea, magna cum laude
2003
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Topics:
Economics of product variety, product line, retail product assortment, multi-category consumer
choices, empirical industrial organization, public policy
Methods:
Bayesian statistical methods, microeconometrics
DISSERTATION
Title: The Impact of Product Variety on Consumer Demand and Firm Performance
Co-chairs: Naufel J. Vilcassim and Kanishka Misra
Essay 1.
“The Perils of Category Management: The Effect of Product Assortment on Multicategory
Purchase Incidence,” with Kanishka Misra and Naufel J. Vilcassim (revising for invited secondround review at the Journal of Marketing)
Essay 2.
“Product Variety as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from the Post-Deregulation Korean Soju
Market,” with Jinhwa Chung
* Winner, 2015 EMAC Best Paper of the Conference Based on Doctoral Work
Essay 3.
“The Impact of Commodity Taxation on Firm’s Product Portfolio and Market Structure,” with
Kanishka Misra and Vishal Singh
* Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship PhD Awards (£6,000)
(See Appendix for extended abstracts of the essays and other selected work.)
WORK IN PROGRESS
“The Use of Bundling in Telecommunications Markets,” with Anja Lambrecht and Katja Seim (data collection/
processing completed)
“Market Entry and Competition in Service Quality: Converge vs. Diverge,” with Prasad Vana (data collection/
processing completed)
1/6
PRESENTATIONS
“Product Variety as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from the Post-Deregulation Korean Soju Market”
EMAC Annual Conference, KU Leuven
2015
Trans-Atlantic Doctoral Conference, London Business School
2015
INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Emory University
2014
“The Perils of Category Management: The Effect of Product Assortment on Multicategory Purchase Incidence”
* A previous version was presented under a different title; “A Tempting Assortment: The Effect of --”
Theory + Practice in Marketing Conference, Georgia State University
2015
INFORMS Marketing Science Conference, Ozyegin University
2013
EMAC Doctoral Colloquium, Istanbul Technical University
2013
Trans-Atlantic Doctoral Conference, London Business School
2012
Marketing Department Seminar, London Business School
2012
FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS AND AWARDS
Winner, EMAC Best Paper of the Conference Based on Doctoral Work
2015
Fellow, AMA-Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium
2014
Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship PhD Awards
2014
Fellow, Workshop on Quantitative Marketing and Structural Econometrics
2013
Fellow, ISMS Marketing Science Doctoral Consortium
2013
Fellow, EMAC Doctoral Colloquium
2013
2010 – Present
PhD Fellowship, London Business School
Best Employee Award, ACNielsen Korea
2005
Dean’s Scholarship, Sogang University
1997, 2001 - 2002
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Seminar Instructor, “Marketing (Masters in Management),” with Professor Bruce Hardie
In-Class Tutor, “Customer and Marketing Analytics (MBA),” with Professor Bruce Hardie
2015
2012 - 2015
Volunteer Teacher of English, Seoul Public School for the Blind, Korea
2001
Volunteer Teacher, Catholic Care Centre (for the mentally impaired), Korea
1997
OTHER RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
National Health Services (Croydon University Hospital), UK
Statistical model building and testing of newborns’ auditory brainstem responses to stimuli
2012, 2015
Centre for Economic Performance (London School of Economics), UK
EUROSTAT household panel data analysis on gender inequality in European labour market
2009
2/6
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Research Fellow, The International Growth Centre, London, UK
A founding member of the organization, in charge of the IGC Research Programme
2009 - 2010
Research Specialist, Oliver Wyman, Seoul, Korea
Asia Pacific head officer for TMT (Telecommunication, Media, and Technology) sector research
Account Manager, The Nielsen Company (ACNielsen), Seoul, Korea
Retail measurement services, consumer panel data analysis, and analytic consulting services
Management Accountant, Unilever, Seoul, Korea
Price promotion profitability analysis and slow-moving stock management
2008
2003 - 2007
2003
SELECTED GRADUATE COURSEWORK
Marketing
Proseminar in Marketing
Nader Tavassoli
Marketing Models
Kanishka Misra
Probability Models in Marketing
Bruce Hardie
Special Topic in Quantitative Marketing *
Puneet Manchanda (visiting professor)
Analytical Models in Marketing*
Oded Koenigsberg
Marketing Management and Strategy
Judgment and Decision Making
Rajesh Chandy
Simona Botti/ Marco Bertini/ David Faro/ Nader Tavassoli
Consumer Behavior
Simona Botti/ David Faro
Economics
MRes Microeconomics I (UCL)
V. Bhaskar/ Martin Cripps
MRes Microeconomics II (UCL)
Martin Cripps
The Economics of Industry I (LSE)
John Sutton
The Economics of Industry II (LSE)
Martin Pesendorfer
The Economics of Industry III (LSE)
Pasquale Schiraldi
Microeconomic Theory: Social Networks
Jean-Pierre Benoit / Emre Ozdenoren
Statistics & Econometrics
Statistical Models and Data Analysis (UCL) *
Giampiero Marra/ Richard Chandler
Statistical Research Method II
Bruce Hardie/ Kamalini Ramdas
Methods of Economic Investigation (LSE)
Vassilis Hajivassiliou
Econometrics
Walter Beckert
Advanced Microeconometrics (UCL)
Jean-Marc Robin/ Adam Rosen
Applied Bayesian Methods (UCL)
Jinghao Xue
Optimization
Stochastic Processes (UCL)
James Nelson
Dynamic Programming and Control *
Richard Weber
* Audited
3/6
SERVICE
2010 – Present
Conference organization and paper review: LBS Trans-Atlantic Doctoral Conference
AFFILIATIONS
American Marketing Association (AMA)
European Marketing Academy (EMAC)
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
SKILLS AND INTERESTS
Language:
Korean (native), English (fluent), Japanese, Spanish (beginner)
Software:
R, STATA, SPSS, WinBUGS, Mathematica, SAS, LyX, LaTeX
Hobby:
Swimming, snowboarding (a former instructor), guitar, traveling (20+ countries / 5 continents)
REFERENCES
Naufel J. Vilcassim
Kanishka Misra
Professor of Marketing
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Academic Director, Aditya Birla India Centre
Ross School of Business
London Business School
University of Michigan
Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4SA
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234
Tel: +44 20 7000 8613
Tel: +1 734 764 9181
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Bruce G. S. Hardie
Anja Lambrecht
Professor of Marketing
Assistant Professor of Marketing
London Business School
London Business School
Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4SA
Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4SA
Tel: +44 20 7000 8622
Tel: +44 20 7000 8645
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Last updated: June 2015
4/6
APPENDIX: EXTENDED ABSTRACTS OF SELECTED WORK
“The Perils of Category Management: The Effect of Product Assortment on Category Purchase Incidence” (with
Kanishka Misra and Naufel J. Vilcassim)
Retailers determine the assortment for a mix of product categories in a particular space. For example, grocers
fill their checkout aisle with items from tempting product categories to entice shoppers waiting in the queue to
make impulse purchases. In some instances, the nature of the products requires that the assortment decisions be
made for a group of categories in a common space; e.g., freezer space in a supermarket. Within such “target”
space, shoppers are exposed to the entire selection of product categories that are not necessarily correlated in
consumption (i.e., neither substitutes such as butter and margarine nor complements like pasta and pasta sauce).
In this paper, we examine whether the assortment of one category affects a consumer’s purchase incidence
decision in another independent category that shares a common display space (e.g., frozen meals and ice cream).
We use a multivariate probit model of purchase incidence and incorporate perceived variety captured via an
entropy measure of an assortment. Results from analysing IRI data and an online experiment provide strong
evidence that consumers are less likely to purchase from a category of a given assortment when it is presented
with another category assortment of higher perceived variety. We document further that the effects are due to
psychological effects driven by the display proximity, as opposed to their purchase behaviour under budget
constraints. This work serves as one of the first studies documenting the impact of a consumer’s perception of
assortment beyond a single product category, and the results highlight the importance of aisle management,
rather than individual category management in grocery retailing when making product assortment decisions.
“Product Variety as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from the Post-Deregulation Korean Soju Market” (with Jinhwa
Chung)
This paper studies a multi-product firm’s use of product variety in its strategic interactions with potential entrant
firms. Firms offer a variety of products not only to compete with firms already in the market but also to preempt
the profitable product space and deter potential entry. Yet, there are few empirical studies that document
separately to what extent new product launches by the incumbent firms influence and are influenced by
competitors’ market entry. In this paper, we document empirical evidence of the incumbent firm’s entrydeterring product strategies in the Korean soju market. This market, previously composed of independent
geographic markets, each with a protected incumbent producer, became open to nation-wide competition as a
result of market deregulation in the early 1990’s. Across the geographic soju markets, we look at the observed
pattern of product proliferation by the local firms and investigate whether it had any impact on the number of
competing firms in the markets. We build an econometric model that accounts for causal structures surrounding
the incumbent firms’ product variety and the number of firms in the market, and the model also takes into
account both observed and unobserved heterogeneity across firms and regions. The model parameters are
estimated using instrumental variables techniques and we find that product proliferation and dominant market
leadership of the incumbent firm served as barriers to entry following market deregulation.
5/6
“The Impact of Commodity Taxation on Firm’s Product Portfolio and Market Structure” (with Kanishka Misra
and Vishal Singh)
This research investigates the competitive outcomes of commodity tax changes in a product-differentiated
oligopoly. The question of how commodity tax influences the behavior of firms and their implications on firms’
profits and on consumer welfare have been of particular interest to researchers and policymakers alike. While
previous research in this stream has studied the optimal tax design by addressing the issue of tax incidence (i.e.,
economic cost sharing between firms and consumers), we focus on the role of commodity taxation in inducing
firms’ investment in product quality and product line expansion, and the resulting market structure. Our question
was motivated by intriguing observations from the Korean alcoholic beverage industry and the U.S. cigarette
industry. In Korea, a preferential tax rate applied to domestic soju products against imported liquors had become
an issue among members of the WTO, and the government was pressured to equate the tax rates levied on soju
and whisky products in 2000. This resulted in an abrupt increase in tax rates for soju products, and since the
change we observe that the soju market became more concentrated. Further descriptive statistics indicate that
firms may have responded to higher tax rates by reducing their product quality and variety. Interestingly, we
have confirmed that such an association between the commodity tax rate and market concentration was also
present in the U.S. cigarette industry where the tax rates varied over time by state. We currently examine the
mechanism that accounts for how a commodity tax increase can provide a disincentive for firms to invest in
product quality and variety, and furthermore, how it could benefit larger manufacturers or brands.
“The Use of Bundling in Telecommunications Markets” (with Anja Lambrecht and Katja Seim)
The convergence of telecommunications and cable television markets has meant that many firms have started to
offer bundles that include a variety of different services, such as phone service, video (i.e. TV service) or
Internet access. This change in the marketplace has increased competition between service providers that
previously served separate product markets. For example, many firms that used to provide only local telephone
service now also offer Internet access and, sometimes, video. At the same time, cable companies that delivered
only video services now likewise provide Internet access and phone service. Empirical findings on the
effectiveness of such bundling strategies in the telecommunications markets are scarce and a major challenge
has been a lack of data that capture both demand- and supply- side variation. We overcome this challenge by
constructing a comprehensive dataset that contains each provider’s set of service offerings and customers’
service adoption and provider choices in the US over time. We obtained the customers’ service subscription data
from their bills and additional survey data, and complemented them with detailed information on the service
offerings at the provider level for a time period from 2005 to 2007. Exploiting rich variation in the data, we aim
to answer a number of questions such as:

How effective was the bundling strategy in penetrating into a new service domain? For example, did
cable operators successfully leverage their video market leadership in the Internet or telephone market?

How effective was the strategy in strengthening the firm’s position in the focal service domain?

What was the impact of the strategy on a customer’s multi-service subscription behaviors?
6/6