Naufel Vilcassim is Professor of Marketing at the London School of Economics and Political Science LSE). He joined LSE in 2017 as the Head of the Department of Management, in which capacity he served until September 2023. His expertise is on the use of economic theory and econometric techniques to analyse substantive marketing problems. He has focused his research on problems in the areas of the marketing mix, competitive interactions and market structure, pricing and price promotion, marketing channels, measurement of market response to investments in advertising and other marketing mix elements, and household choice behaviour. He is currently undertaking research that examines the role of managerial capital and access to technology-based business information tools in enhancing the business performance among growth-oriented micro-entrepreneurs in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda).
He has published extensively in leading research journals such as Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Econometrics, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, International Journal for Research in Marketing, and Journal of Retailing, among others. His research has won him the 1991 John D. C. Little Award for best paper published in Marketing Science, the 2021 The AMA / MSI Paul T Root Award for a paper published in the Journal of Marketing making a significant contribution to the practice of Marketing, and was a finalist (two different papers) for the 1996 O’Dell Award for best paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research. He is a recipient of several grant awards, including from the UK Economic and Social Research Council.
Prior to joining LSE, Naufel was Professor of Marketing at London Business School (LBS), where he held several administrative posts including Deputy Dean (Faculty), Marketing Subject Area Chair, Academic Director of the Aditya Birla India Centre, and Faculty Director of the Dubai Executive MBA Program, among others. He also was also a member of the faculty of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and of the Marshall School of Business at USC, and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He earned his doctoral degree in Management from the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University.
He was an Associate Editor for Management Science and has served on the editorial boards of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Quantitative Marketing and Economics and the International Journal of Research in Marketing and the Asian Journal of Marketing. He has also served on the research grant proposal evaluation panel of the European Research Council and the Hong Kong Universities Grant Commission Research Assessment Exercise and has evaluated research proposals for the USA National Science Foundation. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research & Management Science (INFORMS) and the American Marketing Association. He has also consulted for various corporations. Born in Sri Lanka, he is a naturalised citizen of the USA and a permanent resident of the UK.