Hester van Herk is an interdisciplinary researcher and full professor of Cross-Cultural Marketing Research at VU and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Hester holds a PhD (2000) in marketing and cross-cultural psychology from Tilburg University. She studied psychology at Leiden University with a major in research methodology and minors in social and organizational psychology and in mathematics. After obtaining her MSc, she worked as a scientific researcher at Statistics Netherlands, Solvay Duphar, ABN Amro, and MarketResponse. At Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam she was Program Director of the Bachelor of Business Administration (2010-2013) and Acting Department Chair at the Marketing department (2013-2015).
Her main research interests are in the antecedents and consequences of human values on consumer behavior in developed and emerging markets and in research methodology providing insight into differences and similarities between survey responses from consumers in different nations and cultural groups. About these subjects she has published in journals such as Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Journal of International Marketing, European Journal of Personality, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Multivariate Behavioral Research. In 2017, she co-authored the book "International & Cross-Cultural Business Research" with Jean-Claude Usunier and Julie Anne Lee and co-edited the book "Cross Cultural Issues in Consumer Science and Consumer Psychology. Current perspectives and Future Directions" with Carlos J. Torelli.