Investigating The Effectiveness Of Prominent Product Placement Based On Product Category And Placement Modality

Commercial advertising market enters into a slow developing period, and its scope of development will be restricted to a large extent because of some new laws and regulations standardizing the management of advertising sales in media and the popularization of paid TV. Besides, our information flooding society is full of advertisings differ in producing level, which badly increases the audiences'antipathy and escape. Product placement represents a natural, non-aggressive way of promoting a product of a brand, and it is becoming a new revenue growth in movie, television, exhibition movement and other media rapidly. Many marketers also consider product placement an effective and important communication strategy.In the last few decades, product placement has experienced a considerable growth and been used in movie, television, broadcasting, novel, pop-music, PC games, exhibition and almost all types of media, yet, its volume and sophistication easily outpace research efforts in the field. The extant literature on product placement is just over a decade old, is relatively sparse, and presents other special challenges and opportunities for further researchers. Many foreign scholars began the product placement research early from 90s'last century, and their researches mainly involved the definition and category of placement, the evaluation of placement effect, audiences'attitude and judgment toward placement, factors that affect placement effect, etc. Some important and meaningful findings were discussed in these articles. Domestic scholars'research of product placement began recently and far behind foreign studies in volume and level, and most of which showed no canonical method design or rational demonstration. As the product placement boosted in China in recent years, a few of Chinese scholars attempted to do some empirical studies referring to foreign research methods, and exploratory results were also found. Because the research of product placement begins not long and the real application has become more and more sophisticated, many questions are yet to be solved and explained.This study based on the merchandise school's goods classifying standard which was set according to the brand difference and consumer purchasing involvement of a good, and analyzed the effect difference of placement when convenience good, shopping good and specialty good were placed prominently into the movie in visual, verbal and plot modalities. Many product placements were taken from famous commercial movies that released in recent years, and then been well picked out according to the placements'product category, modality and prominence by questionnaire investigating college students and movie goers. Then the final chosen product placements were edited and assembled into one movie cut, and this cut was played to college students in classroom and movie goers through internet. Questionnaire research was used to gain the data of placement effect after subjects watching the whole movie cut, and then data analysis was to show the brand recall, brand attitude and purchase intention of product placements in that cut. The study used a 3 (product category; convenience good; shopping good; specialty good)×3 (placement modality: visual; verbal; plot) within-subjects design, in the sense that all subjects saw all product placements in the cut and offered effect data. According to the data analysis, study found that placements of different product categories showed no prominent difference in brand recall but brand attitude and purchase intention; while placements of different modalities differed in brand recall, brand attitude and purchase intention. The study also found that male subjects were more positive in brand attitude and purchase intention but the no such difference existed in brand recall. Older subjects had lower brand recall and attitude, and frequent movie watchers can notice and memorize the placement in the movie easier. At last, marketing implications were given according to the literature review and data analysis, and further research was also mentioned be dead against the study's limitation. The contributions of this study can be listed in two aspects. First, study reviewed and summarized the main product placement literatures in both home and abroad, which could be a help for further Chinese researchers, and the study itself will make exploratory contributions to the inchoate Chinese scholar research in placement field; second, this study based on the goods classifying standard of merchandise school, used within-subjects design to examine the effect difference of product placements in different product categories and placement modalities, which developed a new research aspect of product placement. Besides, product category and placement modality are both exercisable factors that affect placement effect, so the research findings had practical meanings for corporate advertisers and movie makers.