Motherhood and consumption: A systematic review and directions for future research

Abstract

This article presents a hybrid literature review on the relationship between motherhood and consumption, encompassing academic research in Business, Management, and Cultural Studies that investigates mothers as consumers and the reciprocal influence between mothers and other actors in family consumption dynamics. Bibliometric research was conducted on 175 articles indexed on the Web of Science using the SPAR-4-SLR protocol. It included performance analysis, intellectual and conceptual structure of the field, an evolutionary overview of publications, and a map of trends. Moreover, from the systematic review, a new framework, PTCCM, is proposed to identify the publications' widely used perspectives, theories, constructs, characteristics, and methods. The findings reveal nine major perspectives on motherhood and consumption: consumer socialization and intergenerational influence, consumption and identity, vulnerabilities and public policies, consumption and liminality, influences of children on family consumption, maternal practices, decision-making and consumption process, gender studies, and advertising. Based on the identified gaps, thematic, theoretical, contextual, and methodological suggestions for future work are presented. This systematic review provides a map for academics and professionals interested in consumption in the context of motherhood, offering a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art and research agenda.