Consumer's subjective financial well-being: A systematic review and research agenda

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.