professor sam hui
Associate Professor of Marketing at the Bauer College of Business, University of Houston
Sam Hui joined University of Houston Bauer College of Business as Associate Professor with tenure in July 2014. Before joining University of Houston, Professor Hui taught at New York University Stern School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Marketing for six years.
Professor Hui’s research interest lies in the intersection of marketing and statistics, and particularly on developing new methodology for marketing research applications. His current research focuses on the entertainment industry (movies, TV shows, gambling, social gaming), in-store shopper marketing, online retailing, healthcare marketing, and Bayesian models. In a recent paper, he develops a new methodology to analyze moment-to-moment data and applies the method to TV shows piloting test for CBS. In another paper, Professor Hui looks at the game mechanisms that casual game developers may employ to encourage gamer retention and engagement.
Professor Hui has been selected in 2013 as a MSI young scholar, a “potential leader” of the next generation of marketing academics. He is named the AMA Retail and Pricing SIG Young Scholar in 2014. In 2014, Professor Hui is the winner of the MSI/H. Paul Root Award for significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of marketing. He is also the recipient of the 2010 AMA Innovation, Technology, and Interactivity SIG Best Paper Award, 2008 George B. Dantzig Award (2nd prize), 2008 John Howard Dissertation Award; the 2007 AMA EXPLOR Award, recognizing the most innovative use of technology in advancing marketing research. Professor Hui’s academic research has been published in Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Annals of Applied Statistics, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Bayesian Analysis, and Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry.
Outside of academia, Professor Hui has applied his research in various consulting projects for companies including Amazon, Unity Technology, Machine Zone, Merck, RetailNext, Advantage Healthcare, Relay Network, Playnomics (acquired by Unity), Rent Bureau (acquired by Experian), among others. In 2009, Professor Hui co-founded homeprice.com.hk, which has become the top online real estate appraisal site in Hong Kong and has made more than 7 million+ real estate valuations to date. Mashwork.com, a patent-pending commercialization based on Professor Hui’s research on social media listening (for TV shows) has been named a finalist in the 2011 NYU Technology Venture Competition. Mashwork has raised $5.6 million in Series A financing in 2015, and is currently used by major TV networks such as NBC, FOX, Sony Pictures, HBO, and Viacom. Professor Hui also developed a “player lifetime value” scoring system for Playnomics (acquired by Unity in 2014), a predictive and analytic platform for mobile apps and games.
Professor Hui received his B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science, his M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.