1.8
The Pursuit of “Better”: Can Contentment Thrive in an Age of Perpetual Self-Optimization?
Cheryl-lyn Ngoh
Melanie Moore Koskie
How might consumers find “enough” in a marketplace organized around continual improvement? This track brings scholars together to examine contentment as a resource for consumer well-being amid perpetual self-optimization. Across increasingly optimization- oriented marketplace contexts, consumers are encouraged to pursue better versions of themselves without a clear endpoint. Through collaborative dialogue, we will explore how marketplace practices foster and shape consumers’ ability to experience “enough”; when contentment promotes well-being, sustainable consumption, and healthy growth, and when it instead reflects complacency, resignation or adaptation to inequitable constraints. Our goal is to generate insights for consumer welfare, marketplace practice, and public policy.
