Consumption of financial services is central to understanding the economic lives of contemporary consumers. An abundance of empirical contributions on the ways in which people manage their economic capital and interact with their financial services providers has been spread across different fields. This paper contributes to the rich body of literature dealing with different aspects of consumer behaviour in the financial context by systematising the accumulated knowledge and proposing a conceptual framework that encompasses relevant aspects of consumption of financial services. In this framework, the financial consumption process is presented as a multifaceted construct that incorporates the selection and purchase of financial products and services, relationships between consumers and their financial services providers, as well as the broade rsociocultural aspects of financial consumption beyond the immediate situation of purchase. Finally, the paper develops a research agenda for future studies, providing suggestions for future research.

The aim of this paper is to broaden our understanding of commercial relationships by examining their occurrence in global mobility. Using the insights from 23 in-depth interviews with globally mobile professionals, I show how different types of service relationships occur when a consumer is constantly moving across borders, building and maintaining relational bonds with service providers in different countries. This study enhances our understanding of the destabilizing influence of mobility on consumption by showing how consumers can have service relationships that transcend local borders, where there is place for both traditional long-term and ‘liquid’ relationships, and how these relationships are not mutually exclusive and can coexist in one category, such as financial services.

Prior studies argue that global mobility destabilizes consumers’ sense of home by uncoupling it from particular local settings. This paper extends existing research by showing how globally mobile consumers express their sense of home through financial consumption and develop a set of financial consumption practices as an answer to the demands of their mobile lifestyle. This way, financial consumption can serve as a grounding mechanism, anchoring an individual in a particular location by means of economic capital.