Scott Fay

Professor of Marketing

Scott Fay is a Professor of Marketing in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Professor Fay received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 2001. He previously taught at the University of Florida. His research has been published in such prestigious outlets as Marketing Science, Management Science, the American Economic Review and the Journal of Retailing. In total, he has published 20+ papers and his research has been cited more than 2000 times according to Google Scholar. He serves on the editorial board at Marketing Science, the Journal of Retailing and the Journal of Interactive Marketing. He has received Management Science's Distinguished Service Award three times, is a four-time recipient of the Meritorious Service Award from Management Science, was named an Outstanding Reviewer for the Journal of Production & Operations Management, and is a frequent ad hoc reviewer for several other journals. In addition to his academic pursuits, Scott thrives on being a loving husband to his wonderful wife, Kara, and a devoted father to his three beautiful daughters, Mika, Brianna, and Bethany. Professor Fay’s research approach is to develop parsimonious analytical models to gain fundamental insights about important substantive issues faced by firms and consumers. He is particularly interested in examining how firms can harness the power of new technologies. For instance, his paper, "Partial Repeat Bidding in the Name-Your-Own-Price Channel" (Marketing Science, 2004), is one of the first papers to formally model the Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP) pricing format (as exemplified by Priceline.com) from a firm's perspective. Another paper, “Probabilistic Goods: A Creative Way of Selling Products and Services” (with Jinhong Xie, Marketing Science, 2008, which was a Finalist for the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science 2017 Long Term Impact Award), considers the impact of product opacity on consumer demand and profitability. This paper finds that introducing opaque (or “probabilistic”) products has the potential to benefit many sellers. Other topics Professor Fay pursues include the personalization process, marketing in social media, shipping policies, and service quality.

While at Whitman, Professor Fay has taught the Principles of Marketing, both for business majors (MAR 255) and for non-business majors (MAR 301), and the recitation sections for the Integrated Core (SCM 265). Dr. Fay has also taught seminars for doctoral students (MAR 960). At the University of Florida, Professor Fay taught Introduction to Retail Systems (MAR 3231) and Marketing Management (MAR 4803), which is the Capstone course for marketing majors.

Professor Fay’s research approach is to develop parsimonious analytical models to gain fundamental insights about important substantive issues faced by firms and consumers. He is particularly interested in examining how firms can harness the power of new technologies. For instance, his paper, "Partial Repeat Bidding in the Name-Your-Own-Price Channel" (Marketing Science, 2004), is one of the first papers to formally model the Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP) pricing format (as exemplified by Priceline.com) from a firm's perspective. Another paper, “Probabilistic Goods: A Creative Way of Selling Products and Services” (with Jinhong Xie, Marketing Science, 2008, which was a Finalist for the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science 2017 Long Term Impact Award), considers the impact of product opacity on consumer demand and profitability. This paper finds that introducing opaque (or “probabilistic”) products has the potential to benefit many sellers. Other topics Professor Fay pursues include the personalization process, marketing in social media, shipping policies, and service quality.