Brand placement effects in text and film: An integrated study of moderators, mediators, and novel outcomes with implications for theory, practice and public policy.

Brand placement –the purposeful incorporation of brands into entertainment content– has been growing steadily for the last decade and is now also gaining ground in the realm of books. Although branded products are often used by writers to increase realism or to describe a character's lifestyle or personality, brands are sometimes included for commercial purposes. Many authors, marketing experts, and advertisers seem to agree on the acceptability and persuasive potential of brand placement in books. And yet, this topic is still severely understudied. The proposed research adopts an interdisciplinary perspective and experimentally investigates how placements are processed and how they influence brand and story responses. Specifically, it studies the impact of key placement factors (i.e., if a brand appears in the narration or dialogue of a story; the number of times a brand is mentioned) on brand evaluation in two media (text and film); the role of (1st, 3rd person) narrative perspective in text; and the effectiveness of placement disclosures. It also tests the psychological mechanisms driving these effects by measuring potential mediating variables (placement perceptions, critical processing, identification with characters, story engagement), and employs important, yet unstudied, outcome measures (willingness to pay, real brand choice; story and author perceptions). The findings have significant implications for both theory and practice (advertisers, marketers, policy-makers).

Keywords:BRAND PLACEMENT

Disciplines:Communication sciences, Journalism and professional writing, Media studies, Other media and communications