CHAPTER ONE: An Introduction
1.1 Preamble
This research attempts to use an experimental research design to probe an optimal ways for product placement in blogs. The primary objective of this study is to examine interrelationships among product involvement, placement priming and placement characteristics that influence the effectiveness of the article with tourism- oriented placement in web blogs. According to prior research, we will address these varieties to examine the effect of tourism advertisement placed characteristics and placement priming to find out an optimal combination of product placement in blogs strategy for using by marketing campaigners to promote their products. This chapter traces the research background and motivation, and introduces the research questions and research design.
It also provides an outline of the remaining chapters.
1.2 Research Background and Motives
Product placement has gathered great importance in recent years. It is a new tendency to integrated marketing tactics. In this radical competitive environment and oversaturated media landscape, marketers have improved more innovatively by catching the concentration of prudent customers. Using a more unobtrusive way to influence customers has become more commonplace for marketers. Product placement is one of those ways (Weaver, 2007).
Why did product placement can engage marketers’ attention? We can trace back to the marvelous success of the Reese’s Candy Pieces increased abruptly by 65% following placement in the movie E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982) (Tsai et al., 2007). Then, a noteworthy expansion has occurred large amounts of brands placed in movies (Segrave, 2004). For a latest example, Patrick Olsen (2007) noted that General Motors went all out to promote its cars in “Trandformers.” All of the Autobots were manufactured by GM. The gratuitous lingering on brands and logos turned the action flick into a two-hour-long GM advertisement. The “Transformers” sure plays like a brilliant
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piece of advertising. To GM, that product placement caused the consumers to receive the brand messages actively and could exposure worldwide through the movie. Product placement is like a form of “stealth advertising” (Considine, 2008).
Now, product placement has been seen a useful tool with miraculous power to attract customers to that products placed in any mass media by marketers. Karrh (1998) proposed the effectiveness of product placement offers an alternative as a “paid inclusion of branded products or identifiers through audio-visual means within mass media programming”. In recent years, product placement has been noticeable and widespread in marketing field, especially while the popularity and impact of traditional television advertising have been in decline in recent years (Rosemary, 2000). Compared to traditional advertising, the most important advantage of product placement is that viewers cannot avoid exposure to the placements (Cowley and Barron, 2008). For instance, the latest famous US television show-American Idol, Coca-Cola’s marketers believe it’s worth spending millions of dollars to have their logo during programs, so they have placed laughably large Coke drinks on the judges’ desks. Audience watched the program may unwittingly see that Coke bottle.
However, that would increase the brand memory and great attitude to Coca-Cola’s. This marketing phenomenon has been not a special case. Product placement has been applied in many media vehicles such as novels (Friedman, 1985), popular music (Friedman, 1986), computer video games (Nelson, 2002), and website (Shamdasani et al., 2001) and those tools have been investigate by many previous studies (Balasubramanian et al, 2006; Galician, 2005; Hudson and Hudson, 2006; La Ferle and Edwards, 2006; Maynard and Scala, 2006).
Under Internet vigorous development and Web2.0 comes, website brings a new market and business. As the number of Internet users increases daily, the World Wide Web is a two-way broadcast model of media forums. Now, using Website to communicate with people globally and sharing market news is common to those prudent consumers. Web log (Blog) is that type of website communication tools. A blog is a website, usually maintained by an individual regular entry of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. People can easily record the trace of life, and share individuals story, creation, belief and so forth to friends through
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blogs. Some sharp-eyed readers have token notice of many blogs articles placed brands and that brand advertisements can be read on the side of the blog. The popular web blog originally was used to make a memorandum of events or share thoughts to others by bloggers. Nevertheless, when advertisers (like Google AdSense, Blogger AD, PayPerPost and ReviewME) discovered the influence of blogs on readers, they paid to bloggers to be professional writers to write some sentiments on the sample product, food, travel and so on those companies paid to them to acquire those faithful readers’ trust. Unlike movies, it is hard to understand the true purpose through those fake blogs in which a company will create a fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.
Now more and more bloggers use blogs to record their own real experiments and feeling and attract viewers who have the same interests and hobbies to read their articles. This phenomenon let some of those bloggers being well-known, even become opinion leaders. When a blog can attract many readers and high flow rate, that blog will become an idea promotion channel for companies. There is an old saying: "You take the money, you do the job.” Whether the articles with brands were paid to be wrote or actively by bloggers, readers cannot really understand on the instant unless the prominent placement.
Does product placement really work? This is worthy to think deeply. Numerous studies (Boone, 2004; Gupta and Lord, 1998; Law and Braun, 2000; Roehm, Roehm, and Boone, 2004; and Russell, 2002) examining product placements explore effects that are positive for memory, and choice (Law and Braun, 2000). Cowley and Barron (2008) indicated that it is not surprising that expose to a product placement increases accessibility of the brand or product in memory, as it is difficult to imaging a situation where the accessibility of a brand decreases after exposure to the brand name or brand logo. However, there is potential for a negative shift in brand attitude after forcing a consumer to view brand information. Friestad and Wright (1994) reported that a prominent placement may activate persuasion knowledge such that viewers realize the persuasive intention of product placement. Media specialist, David Fletcher said “Product placement works best when it’s subtle (Considine, 2008).” In addition, people will be affected by their likes or dislikes level.
Viewers’ involvement with a program’s content influences the effectiveness of its embedded
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placements (Bhatnagar, Aksoy, and Malkoc, 2004). People with different product involvement will make different thoughts about product placement. Thus, product placement could not always do well. In some special situation, no matter person themselves or different type placement probably influence the effectiveness. The aim of this research is to examine whether the appearance of placement priming will cause a negative shift in brand attitude for viewers who have higher product involvement.
According to Pollster Technology Marketing, Blog use investigation in 2009 in Taiwan, pointed out that viewers most read blogs ordered from Interpersonal/friendship (32.0%), Love/
bisexual relationship (30.9%), food (28.6%), travel (26.8%) and life (23.7%). Tourism is a neuter issue. With increasing amounts of travel-related online information, tourists have an enormous number of choices as to where they travel and what they do. Thus, this research selects tourism-oriented blogs to examine the effectiveness of product placement.