Professor Yao has won the Paul Green Best Paper Award and the John Howard Dissertation Award, both of which are sponsored by the American Marketing Association. He was the finalist for INFORMS Long Term Impact Award in 2017, the Frank Bass Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2011 and 2012, the John Little Best Paper Award in 2009 and 2011. He has also been selected by the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) as one of the MSI Young Scholars of 2017. He serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.