Is Product Placement Really Worse Than Traditional Commercials? Cognitive Load and Recalling of Advertised Brands

Abstract

Considering the large number of adverts inundating the average consumer every day, the marketing industry is seeking methods to reach clients in a more subtle manner than traditional marketing messages. One such tool is product placement. The article addresses issues of effectiveness of product placement in comparison to a traditional commercial. The objective of the study was to check how participants would recall the content of persuasive messages in conditions of artificially inducted cognitive load (in conditions of traditional advertisement and product placement). Two studies were conducted – a pre-study intended to assess the usefulness of the selected stimuli, and the main experiment. The experiment devoted to this question was planned using an ANOVA scheme 2 (Type of advert: traditional vs. product placement) × 2 (neutral conditions vs. cognitive load). It turned out that the commercial was better retained in neutral conditions than in conditions of cognitive load. The traditional commercial was remembered better than product placement. From the perspective of the study’s ecological validity, of importance is also comparison of retention of brands viewed in a traditional commercial in conditions of cognitive load with retention of brands in conditions of product placement without load. These comparisons indicate the superiority of product placement – brands presented in this manner were more frequently recalled by viewers.

Product placement versus traditional TV commercials: new insights on their impacts on brand recall and purchase intention

“…In terms of brand recall, the present study discovered some novel facts, probably unique and relevant to the local context. It highlighted that product placements have a higher impact on brand recall than TV commercials, which is contradictory to the claims of Uribe (2016), Davtyan et al (2016) and Grzyb et al (2018). An explanation for the discrepancy, as per the claims of Uribe (2016), is probably the difference in stimuli development in product placement experimented by the two studies.…”

“…Thus, it is evident that these can lead to dissimilar conclusions but new findings. Moreover, Grzyb et al (2018) only used a 4-min video in their four treatment groups. However, the current study used a full episode that lasted 19 min (without commercials) and was originally broadcast on television.…”

Determinants of voting avoidance On mobile social media: evidence from WeChat in China

“…Prior research on product placement has explored a wide range of topics and media contexts (Grzyb et al , 2018; Paluck et al , 2015; Tessitore and Geuens, 2019). However, product placement may lose its novelty and may attract the clutter that has characterised advertising in recent decades (Hudson et al , 2008).…”

The effect of articulated sports sponsorship on recall and visual attention to the brand

“…However, this is not a simple matter, since individuals seem to be motivated to resist it (Ringold, 2002), using strategies based on the distortion of information or dismissing the relevance of a message (Fransen et al , 2015). So now companies need to consider more effective strategies of advertisement such as sponsoring of products in media or financing of events (Grzyb et al , 2018).…”