Ada Aka

Assistant Professor, Marketing

Ada Aka

Assistant Professor of Marketing

Academic Area:

Research Statement

Ada Aka’s research explores consumer memory, judgment, and decision-making. She aims to understand how individuals make everyday decisions, ranging from food choices to scheduling doctor's visits. Her research methodology involves developing models that integrate cognitive science and machine learning, connecting behavioral fields such as marketing with computational fields such as natural language processing. Aka utilizes cognitive and statistical models and draws upon concepts and methodologies from experimental psychology to uncover the psychological foundations of consumer behavior. She specifically focuses on applications that shed light on behavior in marketing contexts, emphasizing the practical utility of the models. To validate their potential practical benefits, Aka conducts behavioral studies to test the effectiveness of her research.

Research Interests

  • Consumer Memory
  • Judgment
  • Decision-Making

Bio

Ada Aka is an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her research focuses on the role of memory in consumer behavior and marketing decisions. She employs interdisciplinary methodologies and experimental approaches, including computational models using natural language processing and behavioral studies. Her research has been published in top psychology and marketing journals. Ada obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology (BA), with a minor in Neuroscience and a certificate in Markets & Management, from Duke University in 2016. Prior to starting graduate school, she gained practical experience through her time at Deloitte and her research position at the Computational Memory Lab, where she bridged real-life applications with her expertise in human memory.

Academic Degrees

  • PhD in Marketing and Psychology, The Wharton School, 2023
  • BA in Psychology, Minor: Neuroscience, Certificate: Markets & Management; Duke University; 2016

Publications

Journal Articles

Feiyi Wang, Ada Aka, Lisheng He, Sudeep Bhatia
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
2024
Ada Aka, Sudeep Bhatia, John McCoy
Cognition
October 2023 Vol. 239
Russell Richie, Ada Aka, Sudeep Bhatia
Psychological Review
October 2022
Sudeep Bhatia, Ada Aka
Current Directions in Psychological Science
April 2022 Vol. 31 Issue 3
Ada Aka, Sudeep Bhatia
Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
April 2022 Vol. 7 Issue 2
Ada Aka, Sudeep Bhatia
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
October 2021 Vol. 150 Issue 10 Pages 2175–2184
Ada Aka, Tung D. Phan, Michael J. Kahana
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
2021 Vol. 47 Issue 5 Pages 765–784
Youssef Ezzyat, Paul A. Wanda, Deborah F. Levy, Allison Kadel, Ada Aka, Isaac Pedisich, Michael R. Sperling, Ashwini D. Sharan, Bradley C. Lega, Alexis Burks, Robert E. Gross, Cory S. Inman, Barbara C. Jobst, Mark A. Gorenstein, Kathryn A. Davis, Gregory A. Worrell, Michal T. Kucewicz, Joel M. Stein, Richard Gorniak, Sandhitsu R. Das, Daniel S. Rizzuto, Michael J. Kahana
Nature Communications
February 2018 Vol. 9

Academic Publications

Michael J. Kahana, Nicholas B. Diamond, Ada Aka
PsyArXiv
April 2022

Teaching

Insights by Stanford Business

December 06, 2023
Machine learning brings new firepower to help answer a persistent question.