Product Placement and Product Involvement

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Product Placement and Product Involvement

The Effects on Brand Attitude and Brand Awareness

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What influence does Product Placement have on Brand Attitude and

Brand Awareness for High and Low Involvement Products?

Date: August 2012

Author: Hans Rutger Fongers

Student Number: 1557203

Address: Olympiaweg 18 -‐ 1

Postal Code, City: 1076 VX, Amsterdam

Department: Business Administration

Specialization: Marketing Management

Qualification: Master Thesis

First Supervisor: Drs. J. Berger Second Supervisor: S.J. Salmon

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ABSTRACT

The rise of digital television and new technologies bring television viewers the opportunity to skip traditional commercials. As a result, product placement, defined as the paid inclusion of branded products and brand identifiers in movies or television shows, has gained popularity and exploded to a multibillion business.

A product can be placed in various ways, ranging from very subtle to very prominent placements, holding various products. During our research we explore the effects of, on the one hand subtle product placements, and on the other prominent product placements. These effects are investigated for both high and low involvement products, and brand awareness and brand attitude, which can be accounted as the two most important indicators of audience behavior.

Our results indicate that high involvement products decrease viewers’ brand attitude when prominently placed. For high involvement products that are placed more subtly, this effect on brand attitude cannot be verified significantly.

For low involvement products, a positive effect on brand attitude is proven for both prominent and subtle product placements. Moreover, brand awareness is enhanced more by a prominent product placement than with a subtle way of product placement. This effect on brand awareness is proven to be valid for both high and low involvement products.

Keywords: Product placement, product placement prominence, product involvement, brand attitude & brand awareness

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PREFACE

The master thesis in front of you forms the conclusion of a highly versatile and amusing time as a student at the University of Groningen. After a Bachelor in Business Studies, I am very pleased to complete my master’s degree in the field I am interested in the most, marketing.

The influence of products and brands on people’s lives is fascinating to me. During my internship at Nestlé for confectionery brands like KitKat and Bros, I really came to understand the importance of brand awareness and attitude for the success of a certain product.

From a consumer perspective, I am very interested in the constructive or harmful effects of product placements on television for placed brands. With my background in confectionery, a typical low involvement product category, this interest particularly is in possible contradictory effects for high and low involvement product.

I could not have completed this thesis without some important people. First of all, I would like to thank my first supervisor Hans Berger and second supervisor Stefanie Salmon for their input, support and methodological knowledge. Also, I would like to thank Ramon Sloof for his feedback on my work. Lastly, I thank my parents for their endless support during my study as a whole.

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Nowadays, television viewers have the opportunity to skip traditional commercials as a result of the widespread rise of digital television and new technologies like TiVo. Consequently, the practice of ‘product placement’ increasingly gained popularity as an alternative for traditional commercials. Due to these developments, global market for product placement exploded from $6 billion in 2005 to an estimated $14 billion in 2010 (pqmedia.com).

In academic literature ‘product placement’ is mentioned as combination of advertising and publicity designed to influence the audience by unobtrusively inserting branded products in entertainment programs such that the viewer is unlikely to be aware of the persuasive intent (Balasubramanian, 1994). In other terms, product placement is the paid inclusion of branded products or brand identifiers, through audio and/or visual means, within mass media programming (Karrh 1998).

The practice of product placement is widespread and growing in both movies and television shows. For instance, Ray-‐Ban and Tom Cruise cooperated in two of the most successful movies of the eighties: Risky Business and Top Gun. An indication of the result: the sales of the issued Ray-‐Ban Aviator sunglasses rose by 40 per cent in the seven months following the Top Gun release. Other very well known examples are the Dr. Pepper placement in the 2002 blockbuster movie Spider-‐Man and the appliance of the silver grey Aston Martin DB5 in various Bond movies.

All examples mentioned above are produced abroad, however the use of product placements is widespread in Dutch movies and television shows as well. Well known examples include the consumption of a Yakult drink in Baantjer, the consumption of Haribo candy and the use of a Samsung tablet by the contestants in the popular talent show ‘The Voice of Holland’.

Although marketers’ key ambition is to influence the public using these placements, there is limited substantive empirical evidence whether and how product placement is effective on impacting consumer responses (Homer 2009). Initial research illustrated that product placement enhances brand recall and recognition (e.g. Gupta and Lord 1998); others suggest that consumers often welcome the reality-‐enhancing properties of placements; the scene seems more real-‐life (Hirschman and Thompson 1997).

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trigger counter arguing or irritation (Cowley and Barron 2008, Friestad and Wright 1994, Russell 2002).

1.2 PURPOSE OF RESEARCH

As mentioned above, the practice of product placement is extensive and has developed into an industry of great importance over the years. As a result, various factors are identified to investigate in what manner product placement in television programs (and movies) influences brand attitude and brand awareness.

The factors that have been investigated range from placement prominence (Cowley and Barron 2008; Russell 2002), program-‐induced mood (Goldberg and Gorn 1987), modality (visual and auditory) (Law and Braun 2000), plot connection or congruity (Russell 2002), brand familiarity (Brennan and Babin 2004), exposure duration (Brennan et al. 1999), program liking (Cowley and Barron 2008) to program type (d’Astous and Séguin 1999; Roehm et al. 2004).

All the variables mentioned above focus on the characteristics of the placement (e.g. plot congruity, duration), the viewer (e.g. program liking, brand familiarity) or the program. However, in our field of interest, no research is performed on the influence of product involvement in the relation between product placement and brand awareness or attitude. This exclusion of product involvement is peculiar, specifically since consumer involvement in the television program demonstrated remarkable effects in consumers processing; highly involved viewers are more attentive and therefore more likely to recognize an intentional placement (Cowley and Barron 2008). Therefore, the present research attempts to find these influences by distinguishing products into high involvement (e.g. consumer electronics) and low involvement (e.g. food & beverages).

1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT & RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The problem statement central to this research can be formulated as:

What influence do product placements in television shows have on brand attitude and awareness for high and low involvement products?

To provide a concrete answer to this problem statement, the following research questions are

formulated:

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What is the influence of product placement on consumer brand attitude and brand awareness for low involvement products?

1.4 MANAGERIAL & SCIENTIFIC RELEVANCE

The central problem statement and research questions are relevant for various reasons. As mentioned earlier, a vast body of research is dedicated to the influence on brand attitude or brand awareness. However, the inclusion of product involvement in the relation between product placements and the effects for brand awareness or attitude has not been explored.

This exclusion of product involvement can be accounted as a gap in the literature, particularly since consumer involvement in the viewed program demonstrated remarkable effects in consumer processing. According to Cowley and Barron (2008), for example, highly involved viewers of a television program are more attentive toward the programs content and therefore more likely to recognize an intentional product placement.

Moreover, these highly involved viewers are more likely to remember the placement. Under low to moderate program involvement conditions, however, Cowley and Barron (2008) claim product placements and its persuasive intent go by unnoticed, while peripheral cues have a large impact on viewers. These differences between highly and less involved viewers demonstrate there is a role for involvement in the relation between product placements and its results in terms of awareness and attitude.

Also, investigating the effects of product placements in a gaming environment, Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker (2010) demonstrate a moderating role of product involvement, with more negative brand attitude effects of game repetition for a high involvement product in comparison to a low involvement product.

This recent work by Cowley and Barron (2008) and Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker (2010) emphasize product involvement in various modes, indicating the importance of involvement in this field of literature.

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influence on brand attitude and awareness can result in a useful tool for marketers whether to use product placement for certain products.

1.5 STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT

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2. THEORETICAL OVERVIEW

This chapter includes an overview of the theory. First, an introduction on product placement, product placement prominence and the known effects of this tool will be given. Subsequently, product involvement will be discussed, followed by a clarification of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Finally, both brand attitude and brand awareness are further enlightened.

2.1 PRODUCT PLACEMENT PROMINENCE

There are various definitions of product placement to be found. As cited earlier, product placement is mentioned as “combination of advertising and publicity designed to influence the audience by unobtrusively inserting branded products in entertainment programs such that the viewer is unlikely to be aware of the persuasive intent” (Balasubramanian, 1994). Or in other terms, “product placement is the paid inclusion of branded products or brand identifiers, through audio and/or visual means, within mass media programming” (Karrh, 1998).

Karrhs (1998) definition emphasizes product placement to hold two fundamentals. Firstly, product placement can be implemented in various mass media (video games, movies, television shows, talk shows, music videos and novels); secondly product placement is intended or paid for.

The prominence of product placement has been operationalized in various studies and by a varied set of indicators. Mentioned indicators are the size of the product or logo in the placement, the centrality in the screen, the integration into the plot, the centrality to the plot, the number of times the product is mentioned, the duration on the screen, the strength of the placement and/or the modality of the product placement (Law and Braun 2000, Russell 2002, Bhatnagar et al. 2004). Remarkably, these are also the variables that indicate the amount a marketer is willing to pay for the placement of its product (Bhatnagar et al. 2004).

Homer (2009) states subtle product placement to be only a visual placing with no direct verbal references to the product. Moreover, Gupta and Lord (1998) stated subtle placements to be “small in size, a background prop outside of the main field of visual focus, lost in an array of multiple products or subjects and low in time frame”.

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brand being mentioned in the dialogue. Such ‘script’ placements have varying degrees, depending on the context, the frequency, and the emphasis placed on the brand name. Lastly, the plot connection dimension refers to the degree to which the brand is integrated to the plot of the story (Russell 1998). When the brand is only briefly mentioned, this is considered as lower plot, however, when the brand becomes a central part of the story, this is considered as higher plot placements (Russell 2002).

Derived from earlier work, d’Astous and Séguin (1999) sorted three main types of product placement, namely implicit, integrated explicit, and non-‐integrated explicit. 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. This type of product placement does not include a clear demonstration of product benefits (d’Astous and Séguin 1999). An integrated explicit product placement, on the other hand, is tightly integrated into the story or entertainment content. Here, the attributes and benefits of the product are clearly demonstrated (d’Astous and Séguin 1999). “A non-‐integrated explicit product placement is one where the brand or the firm is formally expressed but is not integrated within the contents of the program. The sponsor's name may be presented at the beginning, during or at the end of the program, for instance, “this program is sponsored by the Ford Motor Company”, or it may be part of the program's title, for instance Kraft Cinema” (d’Astous and Séguin 1999).

Enforced by Russell (1998, 2002) and d’Astous and Séguin (1999), Cowley and Barron (2008) developed a slightly different classification to distinguish prominent and subtle placements to investigate the effects of placement prominence on brand attitude. According to Cowley and Barron (2008), prominent placements are (1) connected to the plot, (2) mentioned more than once or were on the screen for more than five seconds, and (3) either audio or audiovisual. The subtle placements, at the other hand, are (1) not related to the plot, (2) only briefly visible, and (3) only visual, without auditory support.

This classification by Cowley and Barron (2008) will be guiding for the manipulation of the independent variable (product placement prominence) in our research.

2.2 EFFECTS OF PRODUCT PLACEMENT

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defined this effect as the ‘the mere exposure effect’. Through the enhanced processing fluency or ease of processing, this effect ultimately enhances brand attitude. In social psychology, this effect is also known as the ‘familiarity effect’.

Although viewers cannot stop the ‘mere exposure effect’ itself, they can discount brand attitudes in response to the perceived fluency effect if they are made aware of the placement. The discounting reaction requires viewers to explicitly notice the exposure, retrieve a set of beliefs about the potential influence of the exposure, and discount their brand attitudes accordingly. However, this all is very unlikely to occur when viewers are engaged in an activity for entertainment purpose, such as watching a movie or television show (Cowley 2012).

Conversely to the demonstrated brand attitude effects for subtle placements, Friestad and Wright (1999) found prominent placements to be counterproductive in terms of brand attitude. When confronted with long or prominently placed product placements, viewers might become suspicious, elaborate on the commercial purpose of the placement, counter-‐argue, and form negative attitudes or behaviors.

Next to the effect of placement prominence on brand attitude by Friestad and Wright (1999), prominence also has been investigated to affect brand recall and recognition. Resulting, several studies (Gupta and Lord 1998, Law and Braun 2000) revealed more prominent product placements to generated higher brand recall than subtle product placement. Also, Brennan et al. (1999) found brand recognition to increase more after being exposed to prominent product placement in comparison to being exposed to subtle product placement.

2.3 PRODUCT INVOLVEMENT

Involvement is recognized to be an important construct in consumer behavior and therefore has been explored in numerous areas. The main fields are: involvement with advertising (Petty and Cacioppo 1981), involvement with products or product categories (Laurent and Kapferer 1985, Mittal and Lee 1989), involvement with the purchase decision (Mittal 1989), involvement with a service (Kinard and Capella 2006) and finally, involvement with an activity or event (Speed and Thompson 2000).

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“involvement can be viewed as a construct linked to the interaction between an individual and an object”, and it refers to the relative strength of a consumers believe concerning the product.

Evrard and Aurier (1996) also observe this aspect of personal relevance and see involvement as the main predictive variable indicating purchase behavior. This is in line with the definition of Vakratsas and Ambler (1999) stressing the importance of product involvement as a decisive variable. Their literature concludes: “different people respond to different advertisements in different ways, depending on their involvement”.

To explore the concept of personal relevance in involvement, Zaichkowsky (1985) identified three categories of involvement: product involvement, advertisement involvement and purchase involvement. In this case however, Zaichkowsky (1985) ignored the interrelationship among the three forms of involvement. In reaction, O’Cass (2000) includes product, purchase and advertising involvement as constructs of one ultimate type of involvement, known as product involvement.

Product involvement is one of the main variables in our research. Taylor (1981) identifies product involvement as the identification of a particular product category to be “more or less central to people’s lives, their sense of identity, and their relationship with the rest of the world”. Therefore, consumers who are highly involved with a product category award more significance to the product compared to a product with which they feel lower involved. This implies that product involvement has an influence on the motivation to process information. For high involvement products, consumers devote more attention and spend more effort to search and process the information compared to a low-‐involvement product (Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker 2010).

Zaichkowsky (1985) showed that there is a significant difference in the level of product involvement concerning various product categories. For example, she found low product involvement for coffee or cereal and high product involvement for calculators and automobiles. Accordingly, product categories can be classified as either high or low involvement. Nevertheless, Zaichkowski (1994), states that involvement is an individual variable. Therefore, classifying products in high or low involvement product categories is not encouraged, instead, the individual’s involvement for a certain product or product category is used preferably.

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2.4 PERSUASION KNOWLEDGE MODEL

Exploring in what manner people’s knowledge of persuasion attempts (e.g. advertisements) influences their response to these persuasive attempts, Friestad and Wright (1994) presented the Persuasion Knowledge Model. According to this model, people develop knowledge about how, why, and when a message is intended to influence them.

In this model, the message will be affected by the ‘change of meaning principle’, when a tactic is perceived to have persuasive intent. During this change of meaning, “a person begins conceiving an agent’s action, heretofore not identified as having any particular meaning, as a persuasion tactic a ‘change of meaning’ will occur” (Friestad and Wright 1994). In other words, once the persuasive intention has been recognized, a persuasive attempt will have a different meaning for the target. ‘Change of meaning’ effects are specified by Friestad and Wright (1994) “viewers may ‘disengage’ themselves from the context created by the persuasion attempt, to a change of focus effect in which the viewer’s attention moves from the initial topic towards the persuasion knowledge itself”.

Most modes of advertising are widely recognized as a form of persuasion. In the case of product placement, however, this persuasion attempt is less obvious. Even though the practice of product placement is booming, television viewers are not confronted with product placements every time they watch television. Therefore, there is no reason for the activation of persuasion knowledge on every television-‐viewing occasion.

In fact, one of the perceived advantages that product placement has over traditional television advertising is the hidden motive of persuasion. When consumers are presented a stimulus and a context that is construed as an entertainment experience, persuasion knowledge will not be activated (Balasubramanian 1994, Cowley and Barron 2008). When a viewer notices that a placement is pushed from the background to the foreground, however, the ‘change of meaning principle’ can activate a consumers’ persuasion knowledge (Friestad and Wright 1994, Cowley and Barron 2008).

2.5 ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL

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By their Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) Petty and Cacioppo (1986) explain the effect of messages on attitude change. The model demonstrates the source, the message (e.g. number of arguments), the recipient (e.g. mood) and the context (e.g. distraction) that have an impact on attitude towards various objects, issues, people, and advertising messages.

According to Petty and Cacioppo (1986), involvement and the capability of information processing determines how people deal with various persuasive messages and arguments. Consumers tend to process more central attributes in a high involvement situation whereas consumers are more attentive towards peripheral cues in a low involvement situation. Specifically, the ELM posits that attitude change may occur through one of two different processing routes: the central route or the peripheral route. The viewers’ central route is engaged when they have sufficient motivation and cognitive ability for elaboration. However, the peripheral route is engaged when the viewer lacks the motivation or ability to process this information.

Building on the work of Petty and Cacioppo (1986), Petty and Wegener (1999) investigate highly involved consumers to follow the central route of information processing. Here, more cognitive resources are allocated to judge and elaborate arguments. Moreover, lowly involved consumers often pay more attention to peripheral attributes (e.g. color, background music) when forming attitudes towards an advertisement. Using this difference in motivation and routes, the model clarifies the persuasion process for consumers facing various incoming messages and arguments.

2.6 BRAND ATTITUDE

According to Ajzen (2005), attitudes can be defined as “a disposition to respond favorably or unfavorably to an object, person, institution, or event”. Whereas Mitchell and Olson (1981) defined attitude as an individual’s internal evaluation of an object (e.g. a branded product) are considered to be relatively stable and enduring predispositions to behave. Consequently, attitudes should be a useful predictor of consumers’ behavior toward a product or service.

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other words, the consumer is looking for a brand that meets underlying motivation better than alternative brands.

As stated previously, brand attitude can be positively influenced by product placements. The mere exposure effect positively affects brand accessibility, and eventually reported brand attitude (Zajonc 1968). However, in the case of prominent product placements, viewers might become suspicious, elaborate on the commercial purpose of the placement, counter-‐argue, ultimately leading towards negatively affected brand attitude (Friestad and Wright 1999, Van Reijmersdal 2009).

2.7 BRAND AWARENESS

Rossiter and Percy (1987) define brand awareness as “the strength of the brand node or trace in memory, as reflected by consumers’ ability to identify the brand under different conditions”. So, brand awareness is related to the likelihood that the brand comes to mind together with the ease with which it does. According to Keller (1993), brand awareness consists of both brand recognition and brand recall performance.

Brand recognition relates to consumers’ ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when given the brand as a cue, where brand recall relates to consumers’ ability to retrieve the brand when given the product category, the needs fulfilled by the category, or another probe as a cue. In other words, brand recall requires that consumers correctly generate the brand from memory (Keller 1993).

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3. CONCEPTUAL MODEL & HYPOTHESES

In the following chapter, the conceptual model and hypotheses, drawing on appropriate literature for support, will be presented.

3.1 CONCEPTUAL MODEL

In the conceptual model below, ‘product placement prominence’ forms the independent variable influencing the two dependent variables ‘brand attitude and brand awareness’. ‘Product involvement’ applies as the moderator in these relations.

Figure 1: Conceptual model

3.2 HYPOTHESES

Recent work of Cowley and Barron (2008) demonstrates that viewers are more attentive when they like the viewed television program. The viewers look forward to watching a program to satisfy their entertainment goal. Due to the higher level of attention, when confronted with a product placement, these viewers may realize that a brand is intentionally placed as an attempt to influence brand attitude. This way of thinking is in line with the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad and Wright 1994) that predicts viewers experiencing the so-‐called ‘change in meaning principle’ when confronted with a persuasion attempt.

Incorporating placement prominence, Van Reijmersdal, Neijens and Smit (2009) state, “the higher the perceived prominence of a placement, the more negative the placement attitudes and beliefs”. Moreover, Cowley and Barron (2008) provide evidence that prominent placements viewed by high program liking viewers are interpreted as intrusive, irritating and/or distraction and as a result in decrease brand attitudes.

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Like viewers with higher program liking, consumers confronted with a high involvement product are more attentive to the placement. Because of this higher level of attention, they are expected to experience a ‘change in meaning principle’ (Friestad and Wright 1994). Following the reasoning of Cowley and Barron (2008), the experience of product placements evokes irritation and distraction and subsequently leads to lower brand attitude.

Following the reasoning above, we hypothesize:

H1: For a high involvement product, viewers exposed to prominent product placements will report more negative brand attitudes for the placed brands compared to viewers not exposed to the placement.

Contrasting to the findings for high levels of program liking, Cowley and Barron (2008) found viewers with moderate to low levels of program liking to be less aware of the placement. As a result, the viewers of the placement are unaware of the persuasive intent of the placement.

Like viewers with lower program liking, viewers confronted with prominent placement containing a low involvement product lack motivation to process the information provided. According to Petty and Cacioppo (1986,) these viewers engage the peripheral route. Because of the low involvement toward the placed product, attention towards the persuasive attempt will not be raised (Friestad and Wright 1994). As a result, no irritation or distraction is experienced. The mere exposure, however, positively affects brand accessibility, and ultimately, reported brand attitude (Zajonc 1968).

Exploring two key dimensions, prominence and involvement, Russell (1998) proposes that a mismatch between the two (here low product involvement and high prominence) might increase brand recall due to the incongruence of the stimuli triggering cognitive processing. This mismatch might also increase counter argumentation, and thus lead to more negative brand attitudes compared to a match between the dimensions.

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Following from the reasoning above we hypothesize:

H2: For a low involvement product, viewers exposed to prominent product placements will report more positive brand attitudes for the placed brands compared to viewers not exposed to the placement.

Research shows that the effects of product placements are moderated by the viewers’ awareness of manipulation (Warth 2008). Specifically, the effect of a subtle placement is stronger if the viewers do not pay attention to the presence of the brand. When the viewer explicitly notices being exposed to a product placement, a discounting reaction towards the placement will discount their brand attitude.

In the case of subtle placements, the placement appears on the screen without the viewer explicitly noticing, or, according to Petty and Cacioppo (1986), the viewer is expected to lack the ability to process the information. Because of the mere exposure effect however, the exposure enables brand accessibility and ultimately leads towards enhanced brand attitude (Zajonc 1986, Cowley 2012).

Since the expectation of Russell (1998) concerning mismatches are invalidated by Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker (2010), we believe the mere exposure effect to hold for both high and low involvement products.

Therefore we hypothesize H3 and H4:

H3: For a high involvement product, viewers exposed to subtle product placements will report more positive brand attitudes for the placed brands compared to viewers not exposed to the placement.

H4: For a low involvement product, viewers exposed to subtle product placements will report more positive brand attitudes for the placed brands compared to viewers not exposed to the placement.

As the hypotheses for effects on brand attitude are formed, the effects of product placing prominence, with high and low product involvement as moderator, on brand awareness is presented.

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recall and brand recognition performance. Therefore, we can combine the findings of Keller (1993) with the findings of Gupta and Lord (1998) and Brennan et al. (1999).

Since the expectation of Russell (1998) concerning a mismatch between two dimensions, here prominent product placements and low involvement, are contradicted by Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker (2010), we base our expectations on the combined work of Keller (1993), Gupta and Lord (1998) and Brennan et al. (1999).

For these reasons we hypothesize:

H5: For a high involvement product, viewers exposed to prominent product placements will report higher brand awareness for the placed brands compared to viewers exposed to a subtle product placement.

H6: For the low involvement product, viewers exposed to prominent product placements will report higher brand awareness for the placed brands compared to viewers exposed to a subtle product placement.

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4. METHODOLOGY

4.1 EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The hypotheses drafted are tested experimentally; the aim here is to gain insight in the effect of product placement prominence on brand attitude and brand awareness. Within this relationship, we add the moderating effect of product involvement.

The experiment is designed as a 2 x 2 model. The two elements that will be manipulated are the prominence of product placement (subtle / prominent) and product involvement (high / low). Effects on both brand attitude and brand awareness are tested; the results correspond with the six hypotheses drafted.

The experimental model, with the elements and resulting conditions are clarified in the two tables below (table 1a and 1b). Here, we separated the model for the effects on brand attitude (condition 1 to 4) and the effects on brand awareness (conditions 5 and 6).

Product involvement High Low Product placement prominence Prominent 1 2 Subtle 3 4

Table 1a: Experimental model, effect on brand attitude

Product involvement High Low Product placement prominence Prominent 5 6 Subtle

Table 1b: Experimental model, effect on brand awareness

4.2 PARTICIPANTS

In the studies of Russell (2002, 2006), the role of modality and plot connection are tested to affect product placements in television shows. For this research, test groups of around 30 participants are formed to test for each hypothesis. Taking these two studies as a reference, we aimed for test groups of this size as well. Moreover, the tests conducted require the test groups to be over 30 samples.

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4.3 PROCEDURE

Since the number of clips containing product placements for high and low involvement products is limited, samples of US television are chosen to confront consumers with real-‐life product placements in the research setting. All clips are downloaded from youtube.com and modified into 20-‐second fragments. The four clips hold prominent (clip 1 and 2) or subtle (clip 3 and 4) product placements of either high or low involvement products.

For the high involvement product category, the viewer is confronted with product placements of iPhone, a typical product in the consumer electronics category. The clips regarding the low involvement category hold examples of product placements for products by the restaurant franchise Subway (food & beverages).

To enhance the comprehensiveness of the procedure, the clips numbered 1 (top) to 4 (bottom) are illustrated below (figure 2).

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An overview of the prominence, sort of product and original television series of the clips is provided in the table below.

Table 2: Overview clips

To test for all hypotheses, three questionnaires are constructed. These questionnaires include the same questions but distinct stimuli, the product placements. The questionnaires for the three groups (appendix 1) are composed in Dutch and collected online, using the survey tool qualtrics.com. The first test group views clip number 1 and 2, the second group views clip number 3 and 4, and the third group will solely answer the questions without being confronted with any product placements.

Participants in the three groups answer the same questions regarding demographic characteristics (age, sex, educational level), brand awareness, brand attitude, and product involvement (table 4). Comparing the responses of the three groups, it is possible to answer the drafted hypotheses. In the table below, an overview an allocation of the clips over the three test groups is provided.

Table 3: Allocation clips over test groups

4.4 INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

In the previous chapters, placement prominence is discussed based on several researches using a slightly different definition for placement prominence. In our research however, the recent practice of Cowley and Barron (2008) is used to define prominent placements and, on the other hand, subtle placements. The prominent placements are chosen as they (1) are connected to the plot, (2) mentioned more than once or to be seen on the screen for more than five seconds, and (3) are either audio or audiovisual. The subtle placements are (1) not related to the plot, (2) only briefly visible, and (3) visual only (Cowley and Barron 2008).

Placement prominence Product TV series

Clip 1 Prominent iPhone House

Clip 2 Prominent Subway Chuck

Clip 3 Subtle iPhone Chuck

Clip 4 Subtle Subway Community

Test group 1 Test group 2 Test group 3

H1 Clip 1 -‐ No clip

H2 Clip 2 -‐ No clip

H3 -‐ Clip 3 No clip

H4 -‐ Clip 4 No clip

H5 Clip 1 Clip 3 -‐

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4.5 DEPENDENT VARIABLES

The attitude towards the brand serves as the main dependent variable in this research. To measure brand attitude, we adopted the scale of research by Putrevu and Lord (1994). All participants range five items measuring brand attitude on a seven point Likert scale (totally disagree / totally agree). To measure our secondary dependent variable, brand awareness, we adopted the construct of Yoo and Donthu (2001) (table 4).

4.6 MODERATOR

For the feasibility of this study, only a restricted number of questions and products are included. Therefore, we test audience affect using products that are considered in earlier studies (e.g. Martin 1998) as a prototype of the high or low involvement product category, even though product involvement is preferably considered to be an individual variable (Zaichkowski 1994).

Martin (1998) states that product involvement of an individual generally is low for the product category ‘food and beverages’, and high for the category ‘consumer electronics’. Therefore, exemplar products in these categories, specifically Subway and iPhone, are selected. To investigate the moderating role of product involvement, we adopt the 10-‐item ‘personal involvement inventory’ (PII) scale of Zaichkowsky (1994). The ten items are measured on a seven-‐point scale.

Table 4: Scale items

Construct Source Items

Brand attitude

Putrevu and Lord (1994)

– The decision to buy (brand) is foolish

– Buying (brand) is a good decision

– I think (brand) is a satisfactory brand

– I think (brand) has a lot of beneficial characteristics

– I have a favorable opinion of (brand)

Brand awareness

Yoo and Donthu (2001)

– I can recognize (brand) among other competing brands

– I am aware of (brand)

Product involvement

Zaichkowsky (1994) To me (the product) is:

– Unimportant – important

– Uninteresting – interesting

– Irrelevant – relevant

– Unexciting – exciting

– Means nothing to me – means a lot to me

– Unappealing – appealing

– Mundane – fascinating

– Worthless – valuable

– Not involving – involving

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5. RESULTS

In this chapter the results of the data gathering are provided. Subsequently, an analysis of the sample, manipulation check and reliability check is presented. Lastly, the tests applied to examine our hypotheses are enlightened.

5.1 ANALYSIS OF SAMPLE

Before we can start the analysis, the collected data need to be clean. We collected the data using an online survey tool qualtrics.com. This online tool only stores the incoming survey after it is completed, therefore all incoming data is complete for all questions.

To draw valid conclusions, the demographic variables (sex, age, educational level) of the three test groups should be fairly similar. Moreover, to check whether the results of our research can be accounted as representative, the demographics of the test groups are compared with the Dutch overall demographics. An overview of the group demographics, together with the average Dutch demographics (CBS 2011), is provided in the figures below. All in all, the sample does not provide a perfect representation of Dutch society. This is the result of the network of the researcher, consisting mostly of male students.

Figure 3: Sex ratio (%)

In the table above, the distribution of sexes is provided. The distribution of men and women in the Dutch population is practically 50/50 (CBS 2011). This is not the case for the three test groups, more men than women completed the questionnaire.

The difference in sex distribution is computed to be significant (α=0.001) using a one sample binomial test (appendix 2). Nevertheless, as the distribution in sexes is fairly alike over the three test groups, we can test the hypotheses using these groups.

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Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Total sample Dutch populauon

(27)

The figure below shows a gap between the average age of the sample and the Dutch average. Therefore, the sample does not perfectly represent Dutch society. However, the average age is fairly alike over the groups (F=1,854, appendix 3). We therefore can compare the three test groups to test our hypotheses.

Figure 4: Average age (years)

Figure 5: Educational level

The figure above illustrates the educational level (%) of the test groups and the Dutch population. Again, the sample does not provide a perfect representation of Dutch society. However, as the educational level over the three test groups is comparable (F=11,835, appendix 4), we can use the test groups to test our hypotheses.

5.2 MANIPULATION CHECK: PRODUCT INVOLVEMENT

In our research we tested two products to represent either the low or high product involvement category. Based on the work of Zaichkowsky (1994) and Martin (1998), we defined the category of ‘consumer electronics’ as high involvement, and ‘food and beverages’ as the low involvement category. The examples we indicated and tested are respectively iPhone and Subway.

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Product Placement and Product Involvement