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Despite the boom corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability are enjoying nowadays in the agendas of both small and big companies, we still have difficulties in providing a clear definition of the concept of sustainability. There is no consensus on the criteria to be used to define and enhance responsible management that creates sustainable development.

After a systematic revision of the literature, authors have been mapping the limits of the research already done at different levels, dimensions, and horizons, so we do have a 360° map of the research on sustainability. Future developments are also explored to enrich and align the diverse approaches demanded to define this wide, complex, and by now, equivocal concept and the conclusions reveal the many gaps not yet covered in the research field, signposting key issues for further work.

In the last decade, the scope of consumer research has been expanded beyond choice and decision‐making to include various behaviour parameters like the meanings of possession and materialism but that should be studied in the background of cultural differences. Consumer behaviour has been found to be affected by regional differences that come out of various geographic, topological and cultural factors including values, motives and lifestyle. These give rise to distinct subcultures and can be an important determinant of both consumption and non‐consumption behaviours. India being highly diversified, the differences in geographic subculture are hypothesised to be significant. Accordingly this present study extends the current literature and explores the interaction among cultural adherence, materialism, preacquisition dream propensity and pre‐purchase “wish list” all of which are hypothesised to be actually reflecting the influence of regional differences. The degree of materialism was found to be significantly correlated with the intensity of cultural adherence. Regional differences and cultural adherence, as a whole, was also found to be significantly related to materialism and prepurchase dreaming propensity. An interesting perspective was revealed from the content analysis of wish list. Implications of the findings for the study of materialism are also discussed.