2.2.1 Introduction to Product Placement
Historically, product placement has been the promotional technique of placing consumer products or services in motion pictures in return for money or promotional exposure (Clark, 1991).
The appearance of product placement can be traced to as early as the 1920s product placements were used in radio programs. The practice of product placement within the feature film industry traces its origins to the 1930s when U.S. tobacco companies paid movie star and athletes to endorse their brands (McKechnie and Zhou, 2003). In 1945, Joan Crawford noticeably drank Jack Daniels whiskey in the film, Mildred Pierce (Reed, 1989). Reed (1989) illustrated that product placement in movies became an important element of marketing programs when the sales of Reese’s Pieces grew 66% within three months of being prominently shown in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 hit, E.T.
An early definition of product placement was often used as the planned entries of products into movies or television shows that may influence viewers’ product beliefs and/ or behaviors favorably.
Product placement is a combination of advertising and publicity designed to influence the audience
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by unobtrusively inserting branded products in entertainment programs such that the viewers is unlikely to be aware of the persuasive intent (Balasubramanian, 1994). Academic research has described the impact of product placement on brand attitudes (Babin and Carder, 1996; Nebenzahl and Secunda, 1993), brand recall (d’Astous and Chartier, 2000; Gupta and Lord, 1998; Ong and Meri, 1994; Vollmers and Mizerski, 1994), and brand salience (Babin and Carder, 1996), as well as on consumer attitudes and experiences toward products placed in movies (DeLorme and Reid, 1999;
Gupta, Balasub-ramanian, and Klassen 2000; Gupta and Gould 1997; Karrh, Frith, and Callison 2001; Nebenzahl and Secunda 1993). Findings across these studies indicate that viewers are able to correctly recognize brands placed in films and that consumers do not really mind seeing products placed in motion pictures. However, the successful applications in movies made marketers see the benefits of product placement, consequently largely placed brands or products in many instruments such as feature films (D’Orio, 1999), cable television (Fitzergrald, 2002), broadcast television (Vagnoni, 2001), 2001), popular novels (Nelson, 2004), music CDs/videos (Maclean’s, 2005), computer/video games (Nelson, Keum and Yaros, 2004), and blogs (Maclean’s, 2005).
2.2.2 The Characteristics to Product Placement
Cowley’s (2008) study pointed that much of the research on placement has focused on explanatory variables describing the characteristics of the placement itself, such as modality (Law and Braun, 2000; Russell, 2002), congruity with the plot (Russell, 2002), type of program (d’
Astous and Seguin, 1999; Roehm, Roehm, and Boone, 2004) and placement prominent (Gupta and Lord, 1998). According to MacInnis et al. (1999), there are three ingredient of brand information processing: motivation, opportunity and ability. Opportunity is the extent to which distractions or limited exposure time affect consumer attention to brand information in an advertisement. This concept was extended to product placement (Karrh, 2003; Balasubramanian et al., 2006).
Opportunity is influenced by both a placement’s prominence and the duration of its exposure (Balasubramanian et al., 2006).
Gupta and Lord (1998) used a two-dimensional approach to categorize different types of
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product placements. One dimension was the mode of presentation (the senses activated by the stimulus) and the other was level of prominence (the extent to which the product placement possesses characteristics designed to make it a central focus of audience attention). Moreover, they used three modes to represent the subtlety or prominence of presentation: visual only, audio only and combined audio-visual. Prominent placements are those in which the product (or other brand identifier) is made highly visible by virtue of size and/or position on the screen or its centrality to the action in the scene. Subtle placements are those in which the brand is not shown prominently (e.g., small in size, a background prop outside of the main field of visual focus, lost in an array of multiple products or subjects, low time of exposure)(Gupta and Lord, 1998). The research revealed that more prominent placements generated higher brand recall (Gupta and Lord, 1998).
It is not unique, but has its counterpart. According to the modality and relevance, Russell (1998) categorized the prominence of a brand appearance along three dimensions: visual, auditory, and level of plot connection. Figure 1 graphically illustrates this three-dimensional framework, composed of screen placement (Visual component), script placement (audio component), and plot placement (connection to the plot). As illustrated in Figure 1, pure screen placement would initiate visual processing, whereas pure script placement would require only verbal processing.
Nevertheless defined, prominence appears to be a multidimensional variable with important implications for the individual audience member’s opportunity to process.
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Figure 2.1 A three-dimensional construct of product placement
Adapted from Russell (1998), “Toward A Framework of Product Placement: Theoretical Propositions,” Advance in Consumer Research, 25, p. 357.
Differed from previous researchers’ viewpoint from dimensions of product placement, d’Astous and S’egun (1999) sorted three main types (implicit product placement, integrated explicit product placement and non-integrated explicit product placement) by the case of television sponsorship product placement strategies.
Implicit product placement
An implicit placement is when brand, product or service is maintaining a passive role meaning that it is presented within the program without being formally expressed.
Integrated explicit product placement
When a placement is integrated explicit the brand or the firm is formally expressed within the program, in other word, it plays an active role.
Non-integrated explicit product placement
The brand or the firm is formally expressed but not integrated within the program. The brand or the firm’s name may be presented in the beginning, during or after the program.
Auditory Presence
Degree of Connection to the Plot Visual Appearance
Screen Placement
Script Placement Plot Placement
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Implicit product placement often is comparable to a visual placement of a product, while integrated explicit product placements are more connectable to auditory placements or placements where a product is used and mentioned by a main star of the television show (d’Astous and S’egun, 1999). This viewpoint is similar to Gupta and Lord (1998) claimed the dimension about level of prominence. An implicit product placement is one where the brand is present within the program without being formally expressed: it plays a passive contextual role, and is considered low in obtrusiveness (d;Astous and S’egum, 1999). For example, a character in a movie may be drinking a can of Pepsi, but the brand is not relevant to the story (Hudson et al., 2007). Explicit product placement refers to product placement that is tightly integrated into the story or entertainment content (d’Astous and S’egum, 1999). For instance, in the movie I Am Sam, Starbucks is featured not only as a backdrop to the story, but actively plays a role as the main character’s place of employment (Hudson et al., 2007).
By way of review, prominence has been discussed and/or operationalized as the size of the product or logo, centrality in the screen integration into the plot, centrality to the plot, number of mentions, duration on screen, strength of the placement and/ or modality (Auty and Lewis, 2004;
Babin and Carder, 1996; Bhatnagar, Aksoy, and Malkoc, 2004; Gupta and Lord, 1998; Law and Braun, 2000; Russell, 2002). Furthermore, which type of product placement is better? Gupta and Lord (1998) found that recall and recognition are better for prominently placed products rather than those simply appearing in the background subtle placements. Schneider and Cornwell (2005) have replicated the findings. Prominent placement has consistently been found to determine memory performance with more prominent brands better remembered than less prominent ones (Banbin and Carder, 1996; Gupta and Lord, 1998; Law and Braun, 2000) and those researchers demonstrated that the more prominent the placement, the greater the impact.
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