Liking of Movie Genre Alters the Effectiveness of Background Product Placements

Abstract

Product placement has been likened to evaluative conditioning (EC) in which a viewer's liking of an actor using a brand transfers to the brand. Less research has evaluated how more subtle background placements work. Further, most published studies report explicit brand attitudes as outcome measures. We show that background placements of a familiar brand can alter implicit brand attitudes. Furthermore, viewers who liked the movie genre showed positive implicit attitudes, and viewers who disliked the movie genre showed negative implicit attitudes, suggesting that genre generated affect transferred to implicit attitudes. Advertising implications are discussed.

Notes

Note. Values represent the Implicit Association Test attitude score with standard deviations in parentheses. Positive scores indicate an implicit preference for Coca-Cola. Sample sizes ranged from 25 to 28 across the four conditions. Different subscripts represent means different at the .05 level by tests for simple effects.