Scott thought of himself as a very successful marketer. He created a campaign with a product logo that was very popular and that customers associated with a quality product. It was so popular that in a few months, the logo began to appear almost everywhere. Instead of increasing sales of the product, the customer demand began to decrease as competitors' products became more successful. What characteristic of learning was ruining Scott's apparent success?
A) Too much repetition was decreasing the strength of the CS, thus leading to extinction of the learned relationship between the logo, the quality of the product, and the association with Scott's company.
B) Customers confused Scott's logo with the logo of Scott's competitors, making cognitive learning incomplete.
C) The logo produced only a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement that did not sustain sales, while Scott's competitor used a variable-ratio schedule.
D) Over time the logo became boring, and customers punished Scott's company by buying competitors' products as a type of revenge for their boredom.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Too much repetition can lead to extinction of the learned relationship between the logo and the quality of the product. This is because the customer may become satiated with the logo and stop associating it with the product's quality, leading to a decrease in demand. This is an example of the phenomenon known as the extinction effect in classical conditioning.

Scott Thought of Himself as a Very Successful Marketer