Subjective Financial Well‐being (FWB) research has gained considerable interest from both academics and practitioners recently. This research area focuses on the consumer’s self‐assessment of his/her disposition, belief, attitude, and behavior concerning money management, spending, savings, and investment. The authors used a systematic literature review (SLR) process, which is a step‐by‐step process‐driven methodology, to find 128 articles published between 1978 and 2020 in marketing and related consumer studies fields. By critically examining the published studies, the paper proposes an organizing framework to identify important research gaps and suggest future research directions. The existing studies highlight (a) macro‐level factors determining the consumer’s FWB, (b) bank information transparency and ethical selling, (c) consumer co‐production behavior, (d) consumer financial literacy and how it relates to FWB, (e) financial inclusion, (f) materialism, personality, spending self‐control, and FWB, (g) multicountry research, and (h) the outcomes or consequences of FWB. Further research directions emphasize the need for research on (a) young consumers and their FWB and (b) role of marketers in maintaining FWB of consumers. The organizing framework offers actionable insights for banks, other financial institutions (FIs), businesses, third‐party organizations (i.e., financial literacy service providers), and public policy makers to increase the subjective FWB of consumers.

Watching television shows in quick succession on the Netflix and Amazon Prime platforms is on the rise. Although widespread, this binge watching behavior has received limited attention from marketing academics. The current study conceptualizes binge watching needs and examines their effect on the gratifications obtained from binge watching. We apply the lens of uses and gratifications (U&G) theory for model development and test the model empirically, using data from two cities in India. We add a new category of needs, namely technology‐related needs, to the existing psycho‐sociological‐related needs (named as content‐related needs in this paper) present in plain‐old‐television studies (POTS). We find that a technology‐related need—that is, modal experience (the presence of media content in various formats leading to superior experience)—significantly impacts gratification from binge watching. We also find a strong moderating effect of self‐control, used in previous studies of binge‐eating and binge‐shopping, in which the effect of modal experience, navigability and parasocial interaction need gratification is heightened for consumers who have low levels of self‐control. We build on these findings to suggest implications for marketers, advertisers, and consumer‐advocacy groups.

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The quest for finding meaning in life is central to human existence. Evidence supporting consumption as a source of meaning in life is scant and lies in discrete studies across multiple disciplines. We call consumption that engenders a sense of meaning in life ‘meaning‐oriented consumption’. In this paper we conduct a systematic literature review of 102 papers, using the Scientific procedures and rationales for systematic literature reviews (SPAR‐4‐SLR) (Paul et al. (2021). International Journal of Consumer Studies, 45(4)). We draw on the theory of meaning in life to arrive at a theoretically grounded conceptualization of meaning‐oriented consumption. We discuss the antecedents and consequences of meaning‐oriented consumption, categories and processes that make consumption meaningful. We gather insights into the relationship between hedonic and meaning‐oriented consumption. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps in theory, context, constructs and methodology. This review identifies several consumption contexts and situations that offer potential for marketers to design meaningful offerings.