Audience Engagement and its Effects on Product Placement Recognition

Abstract

This article explores the feasibility of examining, via self-reported measures, the relationship between audiences' perceptions of the quality of their cognitive and emotional engagement with an entertainment piece and the memory trace created by a product placement. This field-based quasi-experiment uses a within-subject design and targets teenagers. Although limited by the viability of available, wholly suitable measurement scales, this exploratory study finds that audience engagement (which consists of pleasure, arousal, and cognitive effort) and star liking can be measured by self-reports after consumers watch a movie and that star liking, cognitive effort, and pleasure affect recognition for product placements.

Good guy vs. bad guy: the influence of parasocial interactions with media characters on brand placement effects

“…The results show that viewers' so-called positive 'parasocial attachment' to media characters, and media characters' positive relationships to brand placements, have a positive influence on viewers' attitudes towards brand placements. Similar results were reported by Scott and Craig-Lees (2010). Although both of these studies included parasocial processes between viewers and media characters as influencing factors pointing the way ahead, both were limited by the approach employed to conceptualize and measure the relationship between the audience and the media character.…”

“…On the other hand, it is evident that viewers, and especially their individual relationships towards media characters, have yet to be sufficiently considered in brand placement research (Balasubramanian, Karrh, and Patwardhan 2006;Karrh 1998;van Reijmersdal, Neijens, and Smit 2009). Accordingly, Scott and Craig-Lees (2010) argued that past studies have overemphasized the characteristics of product placement while neglecting the audience, which is relegated to the role of a passive processor.…”

“…Summing up, 'the main limitation pertains to the scales used' (Scott and Craig-Lees 2010, 52). In addition, neither Russell and Stern (2006) nor Scott and Craig-Lees (2010) made detailed assumptions about how these audienceÀmedia character relationships are built and what they initially depend on.…”

“…Since such relationships cannot be measured by the above-mentioned scale, it is impossible to measure possible negative effects resulting from such relationships, even though such effects are of interest to the advertising industry. While Scott and Craig-Lees (2010) addressed this shortcoming by measuring positively as well as negatively valenced relationships using the modified program-liking scale proposed by Murry, Lastovicka, and Singh (1992), they only focused on affective reactions to media characters. Hence, cognitive and behavioural reactions related to media characters were neglected, despite the fact that these might just as well influence brand placement effects on a cognitive or behavioural level.…”

Strategic drivers, anticipated and unanticipated outcomes of customer engagement

“…Bowden, 2009;Brodie, Hollebeek, Ilic, & Juric, 2011;Van Doorn et al, 2010). Key contributions attained in the area include the development of particular CE and theoretically related conceptualisations, including 'customer brand engagement' (Hollebeek, 2011a(Hollebeek, , 2011b(Hollebeek, , 2013, 'media engagement' (Calder, Malthouse, & Schaedel, 2009), 'audience engagement' (Scott & Craig-Lees, 2010), 'customer engagement behaviours' (Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014), 'brand engagement in self-concept' (Sprott, Czellar, & Spangenberg, 2009) and 'social media engagement behaviour' (Dolan, Conduit, Fahy, & Goodman, 2016). While the proposed conceptualisations are subject to specific theoretical differences, they predominantly reflect a focal individual's psychologically based willingness to invest in the undertaking of focal interactions with particular engagement objects (e.g.…”