Effect Studies in Unobtrusive Advertising: From Recall to SOA
A New Experimental Paradigm Applied to Product Placement in Television
This thesis examines product placements on television as an upcoming and increasingly important form of persuasive communication. Drawing its inspiration from previous research in the area as well as from work undertaken in related fields, notably social psychology, the thesis outlines a new research method for investigating product placements along an effectiveness dimension. Different from earlier research in persuasive communication, which has mainly studied effectiveness in terms of explicit recall and recognition, the present work focuses on attitudes and attitude accessibility as mediating variables between media exposure and resulting behavior. The study departs from the traditionally dominant qualitative paradigm within Scandinavian media studies and operationalizes its hypotheses in a controlled laboratory experiment. This methodological change is brought about by a critique of previous research. Specifically, it is suggested that the reason why previous studies have been reluctant (and unable) to demonstrate any effect of product placements on valenced persuasion measures may be that researchers have been blind to the less conspicuous nature of the technique. Instead, inspired by recent findings in social psychology, it is hypothesized that product placements may favorably persuade viewers less consciously by changing the strength of productattitude associations. Instead of changing viewers’ verbalizable affinity toward a placed product, so the argument goes, placements may increase the accessibility of product-related attitudes at a latter stage, when a decision becomes necessary. On a more specific level, it is hypothesized that viewers’ identification with product-related characters is a crucial antecedent of this effect, in that product placements encountered under conditions of high identification will strengthen viewers’ positive associations, make these associations more accessible, and thus facilitate attitudecongruent behavior.
To test these hypotheses, a three-conditions between-participants experiment is run, in which viewers’ level of identification with fictional characters is manipulated. Using the unobtrusive
Implicit Association Test (IAT) – a method originally developed for stereotyping research – evidence is found supporting the hypotheses. Based on a pretest of viewer identification with different television shows containing product placements, two shows are chosen as experimental stimuli. Of the two, the show generating the highest level of identification also leads to significantly more positive product-related associations in experimental subjects.
In terms of methodology, the experiment indicates that testing placements with unobtrusive measures may be a better way to investigate persuasive effects of product placements and that selfreported attitude measures, while having their benefits, may not be as sensitive to the subtler form of influence placements exert. That is, by applying the IAT and focusing on placement-induced

strength of association (SOA), we hope to have outlined a measure that better conveys the likelihood that attitudes will activate to guide behavior.

Contents
1. Introduction
Context: Consumer Research
Challenges to the Memory Paradigm
Toward a New Research Paradigm
Perspective: Dual-Process Models
Elaboration-Likelihood Model
Heuristic-Systematic Model
Traditional Advertising Research: The Memory Paradigm
MODE
2. Product Placement
Previous Definitions
Practical Aspects
Product Placement as Communication
Product Placement as Marketing Communication
Analyzing Product Placement
Theories of How Product Placement Works
Persuasion
Mood
Persuasion Knowledge Model
Classical Conditioning
The Modeling Paradigm
Academic Studies of Product Placement
3. How Attitudes Guide Behavior: An Automatic Process
Defining Attitudes
Attitude Strength
Attitudes to behavior
Automatic Attitude Activation
Attitudes to Consumer Behavior
Attitudes to Behavior in a Product Placement Context
Interlude: Attitudes to Behavior, Strength of Association…
4. The Viewing Experience: Identification and Transportation
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Fiction versus Reality – Entertainment versus Persuasion
Identification
Para-social Interaction
Transportation
Summary: Implications for Product Placement Research
5. Strength of Association: Definition and Measurement
Strength of Association (SOA)
Unobtrusive Measures of SOA
Evaluative Semantic Priming
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Interlude: Discussion of Experimental Research
6. Experiment: Changing SOA with Product Placements
Method
Participants
Pretest
Stimulus Materials
Procedure
Dependent Measure
Data Analysis
Results
Discussion
7. General Discussion
Methodological Implications
Practical Implications
Conclusion
References
Appendix
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Appendix 1: Pretest Questionnaire
Appendix 2: Pretest Scores (Mean values)
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Appendix 3: Treatment Protocol (Identification condition) 139
Appendix 4: IAT Script
Appendix 5: IAT Booklet
Appendix 6: Self-reported attitude questionnaire
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Appendix 7: Data-matrix
Appendix 8: Stimulus Materials
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I. Introduction
All it takes to save the country from nuclear attack is one man, his Ford Expedition ® , a
Macintosh ® laptop, and a Nokia ® cell phone. Saving a much smaller country from organized crime requires more people, a fleet of Nissan ® vehicles, and state of the art Sony Ericsson ®
PDAs. If you can settle for less drama, and just want a happy marriage and the best friends in world, it is recommendable to buy furniture at Pottery Barn ® , use Snuggle ® for your laundry, and drink imported Carlsberg ® beer.
These well-integrated brand-references, drawn from the series 24 (Fox), Unit One
(DR), and Friends (NBC), are prime examples of the recent proliferation of product placements in television programming. Whereas earlier product placements were almost exclusively a movie phenomenon, the last decade has seen a surge in brand-appearances in other media such as television drama, situation comedy, and reality shows. The present thesis springs from an interest in this upcoming and increasingly important form of persuasive communication – an interest in what has been called “the blurring of the lines between entertainment and persuasion” (Shrum, 2004a: xv) - and from a discontent with previous studies of its effectiveness.
Although various studies have shown product placements to have an impact on viewers’ awareness, recognition, and recall, researchers have been reluctant (and unable) to demonstrate any effect on valenced persuasion measures such as attitudes and purchase intent. Specifically, this thesis draws attention to the less conspicuous nature of placements as a possible explanation of the lack of demonstrated effects. As product placements are meant to be less obvious and rarely state any persuasive messages explicitly, we suggest that viewers may simply be unaware of, and thus unable to verbalize, changes in their affinity toward a product or brand. Hence, the goal of this study is to develop and apply a reliable methodology for investigating product placements along a persuasiveness dimension.
In order to achieve its goal, the study explores possible interactions between media studies and social psychology. On an epistemological level, we work from the conviction that the best way to learn about the world around us is by engaging it. More specifically, the study aims to trace the mental processes that are initiated through exposure to media products (television programming containing product placements). First, we establish a conceptual and methodological framework of the technique, then we outline possible

avenues by which it can be investigated, and finally we apply the ideas in an experimental study.
The first section introduces some of the basic concepts and theories on which the subsequent experimental study of the effects of product placements in television rests.
First, the study is placed within the context of ongoing developments in media effects research and social psychology. Second, the academic discipline of experimental consumer research is introduced and related to more widely known areas of reception studies. Finally, the dual-process conception of information processing is established and discussed.
The second section presents theories of product placement and reviews previously published research. The technique of product placement is situated within frameworks of communication theory and marketing, and the concept of effectiveness is discussed.
Consistent with the first section, effectiveness is mainly investigated in terms of persuasion.
The third section establishes attitudes as a mediating variable between exposure to product placements and subsequent behavior. Specifically the attitude-behavior relationship is explored and operationalized to make it applicable in experimental research.
Moreover, the very possibility of assessing effectiveness through an experimental approach is discussed.
In the fourth section, we explore potential determinants of product placements’ effectiveness. In doing so, we focus on characteristics of the television programs, in which the product placements are embedded, especially their potential to generate viewer identification and ‘transportation’ into the fictional narrative.
At that point, the thesis turns to the actual empirical investigation of the theories developed in the first four sections. Drawing upon research in related fields of study – notably traditional advertising and social psychology – we propose an experimental method by which the hypothesized relationship between exposure to product placements embedded in programs with varying characteristics, attitudes, and subsequent behavior can be investigated. This method is applied in an experimental study (N=48) comparing the effects of product placements in two different television shows on viewers’ attitudes (and the accessibility of these attitudes) to those of a control group.
Finally, comparing the empirical findings with the established framework, implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Traditional Advertising Research: The Memory Paradigm
Traditionally, research in media effects 1 has dealt with three key variables, namely recall/recognition, attitudes, and behavior. Of the three, advertising research within several theoretical and empirical frameworks has especially focused on the former. For example, recall and recognition have been subject to a substantial amount of studies inspired by the influential dual-process theories of social cognition such as the Elaboration
Likelihood Model (ELM: Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM:
Chaiken, 1980) as well as by behavioral decision theory (e.g. see MacInnis & Jaworski, 1989;
Greenwald & Leavitt, 1984). Across the various models and theories, it has been a widespread assumption that, in order to be effective, persuasive messages must generate awareness among receivers (e.g. see Bargh, 2002; Hawkins & Hoch, 1992; Law & Braun-
LaTour, 2004). In various languages, this conception is reflected right down to the etymological level. For instance, the English word “advertising” derives from Latin
“advertere” (to direct attention to) and the Danish equivalent “reklame” from “reclamare”
(to shout). Especially the information-processing paradigm of behavioral decision theory rests on the assumption that information encountered when only scarcely attentive has little effect. As stated by Greenwald and Leavitt (1984: 588): “without elaboration, a message’s propositional content is unintegrated with existing knowledge and thus is difficult to access”. In other words, much previous research works from the theory that social judgments and thus purchase behavior is guided by conscious, intentional processes, and that persuasion effects are linked to deliberative processing and active scrutiny of information (e.g. see Heesacker & al. 1983: 663). This approach assigns great power to the presented information and accordingly is sometimes labeled “the strong claim” (Cuperfain
& Clarke, 1985: 36).
Consistent with the assumption that people’s behavior is largely guided by careful reflection, a number of influential models have been developed to assess the more precise nature of deliberative processing. Most widely known is probably the Theory of Reasoned
Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). In the authors’ own words ”the theory is based on the assumption that human beings are usually quite rational and make systematic use of the information available to them” (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980: 5).
1 As indicated by the remarks on epistemology, above, this thesis mainly addresses developments within the field of experimental (quantitative) effect studies. For a discussion of the differences between this experimental approach and more theoretically oriented (qualitative) reception studies, e.g., see Madsen
(2005).

Furthermore, still according to Ajzen and Fishbein (1980), “people consider the implications of their actions before they decide to engage or not engage in a given behavior” (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1980: 11).
Challenges to the Memory Paradigm
In spite of the strong theoretical consensus and a large body of empirical work, researchers have had great difficulty demonstrating the nature and causality of the relationship between rational processing and explicit memory on one hand and judgment and behavior on the other (e.g. see Hastie & Park, 1986, for a review). To a certain extent, this can be explained by the reluctance to investigate the mental conditions underlying changes in expressed opinion. Another possible explanation, implicitly suggested by Taylor (1981; Fiske
& Taylor, 1984), is that contrary to the assumption held by some dual-process scholars, people are generally “cognitive misers”, low in need for cognition (NFC; Cacioppo, Petty, &
Kao, 1984), who often lack the ambition and resources to think something through and therefore rely on more “automatic processes” (Bargh, 1999: 363). On a general level, research in social psychology indicates that contrary to what was earlier the general consensus 2 , intentional control of cognitive processes does not always exist. According to advocates of this new position, unintended processes are especially prevalent in tasks such as impression formation and schema-based decision-making (Uleman & Bargh, 1989: xvi). In a consumer research framework, what is suggested is that rather than intelligent, rational, and problem-solving processes, consumers tend to engage in a less-extensive search for information and a less comprehensive evaluation of choice alternatives (e.g. see
Zaichkowsky, 1985: 341). Hence, instead of striving for cognitive elaboration, recipients of media stimuli are in fact guided by a “sufficiency principle” leading them to the least possible expenditure of cognitive effort (Chen & Chaiken, 1999: 74). Beyond the theoretical context this counter-assumption seems to be validated by actual developments in media and advertising, by the steadily increasing “overload” of mass-mediated information (e.g. see MacInnis, Moorman, & Jaworski, 1991: 32), and by the development in executional style toward a new less straightforward media language (Mick, 1992: 411). In an advertising context, examples of the latter development are seen in the increasing use of practices that aim at less conscious effects, e.g. subliminal stimuli, mood appeals, celebrity endorsement,
2 Until the mid-1970s, unintended thought was studied within the framework of abnormal psychology (Uleman
& Bargh, 1989)

product placement etc. (Shrum, 2004a), a development that doesn’t seem compatible with the hypothesized prevalence of controlled information processing. Moreover, the nature of these unobtrusive practices, in which brand messages are rarely stated explicitly, is such that viewers may be unaware of or refuse to admit changes in their affinity toward a product or brand (Dovidio & Fazio, 1991: 207).
The actual development is supported by research showing that even incidental
(versus deliberative) exposure to mass media stimuli can have an effect on subsequent judgments (see e.g. Janiszewski 1988, 1990, 1993). More specifically, the studies reported by Janiszewski show that preferences can be formed without an accompanying awareness of the preference formation process (Janiszewski, 1993: 376). Evidence that people have positive affective responses toward stimuli they do not explicitly remember having seen suggests that ads or placements receiving limited attention may nonetheless be effective agents of attitude change (Anand, Holbrook & Stephens, 1988: 387).
To generalize across research findings, it seems that the traditionally dominant focus on recall and recognition might lead to an inadequate assessment of real-world reception processes. For example, measurement of explicit memory of an ad or other marketing communication may misrepresent (typically, understate) the influence of that communication (Holden & Vanheule, 1999: 479). This had led Shapiro and Krishnan to suggest that an alternative retrieval process, implicit memory, may function differently from the explicit process that has usually been the focus of scholarly interest (Shapiro and
Krishnan, 2001:1). This form of memory retrieval is automatic in nature and does not rely on consumers deliberately searching their memory for previously viewed stimuli. In a similar vein, research has shown that brand familiarity can develop without deliberate attention to the ad, and without explicit recollection of the ad context (Shapiro, MacInnis, & Heckler,
1997: 102). According to Krishnan and Trappey (1999: 451) the most serious shortcoming of traditional theory and research is the fact that although non-conscious (implicit) memoryprocesses may be acknowledged to play an important role in influencing consumption, this area is still understudied in communication and consumer research. Krishnan and Trappey’s claims receive support from research in related areas of social psychology 3 showing that much of social judgment and behavior occurs without conscious awareness or intent (see
Bargh, 2002, for a review). Transferring these findings from social psychology to consumer
3
The relationship between social psychology and consumer research is addressed in detail below.

research and studying various advertising practices, Hawkins and Hoch found that for many purchases, a deliberate decision process never occurs, because consumers are not sufficiently motivated (Hawkins & Hoch, 1992: 212). Popularly speaking, many mundane products are picked out with the left hand, while the right hand steers the shopping cart.
Despite this, most people seem to cling to the notion that their decisions are willful and for the most part conscious. As pointed out by Meyrowitz:
“We tend to focus on what is consistent in our behaviors from situation to situation and are rarely aware of the ways in which we change behavior as we change situations: e.g. when we choose something to wear or say something, or take any kind of action within a situation, we focus more on what we decide to do than on the limits the situation imposes on us.” (Meyrowitz, 1985: 26 – emphasis in original)
Together, the research findings presented above touch upon a crucial distinction in social psychology and consumer research, namely the one between memory-based and online decision processes (Hastie & Park, 1986) 4 . In the present thesis, the focus shall be on the latter processes. Herein lies one of the major differences between the traditional approach and the approach advocated here. As pointed out by d’Astous and Chartier (2000: 32), previous research on advertising and product placement has major limitations: It has focused principally on brand awareness and has neglected to look at consumer reactions toward placements. From an academic as well as an administrative perspective, what seems to be called for is research examining how well different media products meet the goals of advertisers, e.g. whether different types of advertising actually lead to change in attitudes and subsequent behavior. Hence, this study works from the firm belief that it is less interesting for advertisers that, say, 80% of the audience remembers an ad or placement, if nobody buys the advertised product or service. One antecedent of this change in focus is the assumption that the persistence and effectiveness of persuasive communication are sometimes based on elaboration of the provided (product) information but more often on execution or perceptual cue influences (Krishnan & Smith, 1998: 274). This in turn leads us to discard an array of otherwise elaborate theories such as the aforementioned theories of
“reasoned action” and “planned behavior” (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Ajzen & Fishbein,
1980), in which the attributes associated with an attitude object are evaluated along consciously perceived dimensions. The focus in the present thesis is on spontaneous (vs. reasoned) behaviors, whereas “affect (or anything but salient beliefs and their evaluative
4
For an elaboration, see the section on dual-process models below

aspects) does not belong in the Fishbein model because Fishbein says it does not” (Herr,
1995: 372). Popularly speaking, Fishbein and Ajzen have outlined a theory that seems adequate for the analysis of reasoned action but does not adequately address the possibility and importance of unreasoned action. Although some work has already been done in the area of non-conscious (automatic) processes, the scope needs to be widened considerably.
Whereas the main emphasis in previous studies of automatic processes has been upon hedonic impulses and physiological need states (e.g. addiction) (Bargh, 2002: 280), we propose to move beyond these areas of inquiry to adopt a research paradigm that encompasses the non-conscious operation of any kind of goal or motivation a person can have consciously, e.g. self-protective motivation, performance- or achievement-related motivation, and interpersonal goals.
This leads us to consider some of the discrepancies between experimental settings and real-world (media) consumption that has threatened the external validity (External validity: Aronson, Brewer, & Carlsmith, 1985: 478) of previous research. While qualitative researchers, and quantitative researchers inspired by models such as the ELM, work from the assumption that people are generally motivated to engage in effortful processing, evaluation of events and objects in real life are often made in an immediate, automatic (vs. controlled) manner upon the mere presence of the attitude object (Fazio & al., 1986; Nord
& Paul, 1980) 5 . Another potential threat to the validity of previous research is presented by the dominance of self-reported measures (e.g. see Cacioppo & al., 1992), a methodology that assesses research-participants’ recall/recognition, attitudes, and behavioral intentions simply by asking them to list their thoughts, complete pencil-and-paper questionnaires, or by other self-administered tools. Whereas self-report seems a fairly adequate assessment of the explicit recall/recognition variable 6 , the method tends to misrepresent participants’ deeper level attitudes. That is, when participants are aware of the goal of research, they have the possibility to bias their responses in order to present (socially) desirable answers
(e.g. see Wagner & Sundar, 2003: 3; Lowery & al., 2001: 10). In the context of advertising research, the self-report bias is manifest in what appears to be a widespread skepticism toward the practice in general and thus in participants’ reluctance to admit being influenced by persuasive communication (Kardes, 2002: 42). In this respect, persuasive
5
6
See Section 5 for a comparative discussion of validity
Albeit not an unproblematic one; various methods such as aided recall do present potential problems to the external validity of research findings

communication has some important traits in common with seemingly more controversial areas of social cognition, e.g. racial prejudice and stereotyping (Fazio & al., 1995) 7 . Hence, it seems problematic to equate research participants’ own assessment of communication effects with actual effects (Friestad & Wright, 1994: 16). Moreover, instructions to list thoughts on a given topic (as used in the cognitive response paradigm, see Uleman, 1999, for a review) may well prompt thinking that would not have otherwise occurred. More specifically related to the present research context, Fazio and his colleagues (1982) found that merely having to state one’s attitudinal position in response to an attitude scale may have the consequence of forcing an individual to consolidate his or her thoughts and form an attitude (Fazio & al., 1982: 348). The threats to external validity mentioned here are especially problematic to the study of less conscious media effects. Hence, in laboratory settings, the stimuli attain an “artificial” level of distinctiveness that is hypothesized to facilitate deliberative processing. As pointed out by Krugman as early as 1965, the questionnaires and research procedures themselves may be responsible for creating what high involvement is present, and which would not otherwise exist (Krugman, 1965: 356).
Toward a New Research Paradigm: Assessing Non-conscious Media Effects
Following the alleged shortcomings of traditional research in media (advertising) effects, the need arises to outline an alternative theoretical and experimental approach. The actual design of experimental research is addressed in the empirical part of this thesis 8 . However, to follow up on the observations made above, the requirements to such an approach are briefly presented here.
On a general level, it is necessary to establish a framework that encompasses recipients’ subjective use and interpretation of messages without in turn neglecting the persuasive intention – a framework that does not necessarily see behavior as triggered solely by features of the environment but rather as something that develops in the interaction of those features with the properties of the individual (e.g. see Gollwitzer &
Moskowitz, 1996: 362). Furthermore, theory and research needs not only to distinguish between the knowledge of having seen something before and memory of the context (e.g. consumers who are not likely to be motivated to search for the specific exposure context,
7 research in racial prejudice and stereotyping
8
For this reason (and others), the present study will draw extensively on inspiration from previous theory and
Sections 5 and 6

may make a brand judgment based on the sense of familiarity alone (Holden & Vanheule,
1999: 480)), but to depart more radically from the assessment of memory per se. Only by doing this, can researchers acknowledge the claim made by Cacioppo and Petty that
“comprehension, associations, elaborations, and inferences are more important than verbatim memory for the arguments” (Cacioppo & Petty, 1989: 10), and the observation made even earlier by Petty & al. that “a growing body of research indicates that simple recall or recognition of information presented about an attitude object is not predictive of attitude formation and change” (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983: 143).
Addressing the potential problems of self-report bias, experimental research must strive to circumvent participants’ tendency to give socially desirable answers. In our view, what is called for are unobtrusive measures, i.e., methods that assess relevant variables without subjects being explicitly aware of this assessment, or, more radically, without subjects being explicitly aware of these variables per se 9 . Ideally, as noted by Bargh, the dependent measure should be taken when the participants believe they are entirely outside the experimental situation (Bargh, 2002: 281).
In a wider perspective, the realm of consumer research seems to be an ideal playing field on which to establish whether automatic evaluation and goal pursuit do in fact apply in real life. Consumers’ processing of media stimuli is a type of situation that involves the
potential of being involved and motivated, and where outcomes of decisions can affect important issues such as health, happiness, economics etc. (Bargh, 2002: 282). Thus, if consumers were found only to be scarcely involved and still somehow affected by media stimuli in their decisions, the finding would have implications within as well as beyond the study of purchase behavior 10 .
Context: Consumer Research
As mentioned above, this thesis addresses developments in the field of consumer research.
Since this area of research is not widely known in a Danish academic context, it seems relevant to devote space to some introductory remarks. As indicated by the previous work that has been referenced thus far, consumer research is predominantly an American
9
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See section 5 (Strength of Association: Definition and Measurement) for a more elaborate discussion of the construction of these measures
Examples of implications that go beyond mere consumer research could be found in the areas of social decision making, formation of attitudes through interpersonal interaction, stereotyping etc.

tradition. The tradition embraces a variety of topics, but the origins are normally located within the field of social psychology; in fact, some scholars view consumer research as a relatively autonomous sub-category of social psychology. The link between host and subcategory is that both areas of research are concerned with processes guiding behavior, judgments, and decisions (Kardes, 1998). However, consumer research differs from social psychology pure by studying non-social stimuli such as goods, services, events, and ads. In spite of this difference in scope, an interesting transfer of theory from social psychology to consumer research is undoubtedly at work (e.g. see Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983).
Hence, much past research in the two fields seems to indicate that similar processes are active when people evaluate and judge other people, situations, and products.
Besides psychology, consumer research also encompasses a variety of other theories and methodologies such as anthropology, philosophy, and the humanities (Holbrook, 1987:
129-30). This does not mean, however, that the discipline is all-inclusive. For example, one must distinguish consumer research from its more administratively oriented counterpart, marketing research, a tradition concerned primarily with the study of consumers in a manner intended to be managerially relevant (Holbrook, 1987: 128).
One of the most important vantage points – some would say the raison d’être – of consumer research is the assumption that people are limited in processing capacity and thus only consider a strongly limited decision set. There is some debate concerning the size of this decision set, but one of the most popular theories states that the average consumer is able to consider seven items when making a decision (Miller, 1956). This obviously highlights the importance of understanding selective processes; that is, the mechanisms that determine which items become subject to further consideration and which items receive only scarce processing. From this general level the research questions branch out. In the present study, we especially focus on investigating how the different levels of processing affect attitudes toward the products and subsequent product-related behavior. As indicated above, research on this topic typically draws upon so-called dual-process theories 11 ; that is, theories that distinguish between processes that are memory-based versus online (Hastie &
Park, 1986), systematic versus heuristic (Chaiken, 1980; Chen & Chaiken, 1999), central versus peripheral (Petty & Cacioppo, 1983), attribute-based versus attitude-based (Kardes,
2002) etc.
11
See immediately below for a review of dual-process theories

Drawing its inspiration from social psychology, consumer research marks a departure from the semiotic trend in media reception studies that has been prevalent for decades
(e.g. see Grodal, 1994). Fundamentally, the claim that all perception is “linguistic” is discarded; more specifically, the social psychology approach deals with the ways in which stimuli (e.g. texts) are processed mentally and thus “co-created” by the recipient. As a result, in order to achieve any understanding of different types of media genres and formats one must develop an understanding of the mental processes activated by these genres and formats. In the next section, we propose an investigation of these processes in the framework of dual-process theory.
Perspective: Dual-Process Theories
One of the crucial notions in consumer research, and one of the constructs this thesis rests upon, is that of dual-processes; i.e., the assumption that information can be processed either deliberatively or more incidentally. The notion of dual-processes can be traced on several levels of analysis. First, on the neuroscience level, research has shown how the function of the inferior cortex differs from that of the limbic system, and how the electrochemical activities of these two anatomical regions produce feelings, attitudes etc.
(Gilbert, 1999: 3). Second, on a more tangible level of psychology, it has been stated how cognition differs from emotion, reason from intuition, automaticity from control, consciousness from unconsciousness, and ego from id (Gilbert, 1999: 4). Drawing on these insights, one important contribution of consumer research lies in the assumption that the same stimulus can have qualitatively different consequences on cognitive and affective reactions depending on whether it is perceived consciously or non-consciously (Merikle &
Daneman, 1998: 9).
Elaboration-Likelihood Model
Arguably the most influential dual-process theory is the Elaboration-Likelihood Model (ELM), developed by Cacioppo & Petty (1979; Petty & Cacioppo, 1981; Petty, Cacioppo, &
Schumann, 1983; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) 12 . The basic idea of Petty and Cacioppo's theory is that the efficacy of persuasion, in terms of endurance, depends on the likelihood that an issue or argument will be elaborated upon (thought about) by the receiver (Petty &
12 The following introduction to the ELM is based on a review of all the referenced writings by Petty, Cacioppo, and associates

Cacioppo, 1981). The authors distinguish between two routes to persuasion, the central and peripheral route, respectively. The ELM accounts for the differences in persuasive impact produced by arguments that contain ample information and cogent reasons (central route) as compared to messages that rely on simplistic associations of negative and positive attributes to an object, action or situation (peripheral route). According to Petty and
Cacioppo, some of the crucial antecedents of processing, and thus key variables in the study of persuasive influence, are motivation, ability, and involvement. Involvement in a given situation or issue determines the extent to which an individual is motivated for demanding cognitive tasks. Hence, people who are highly involved tend to process incoming information centrally, whereas people who are less involved will rely on the alternative
(peripheral) route of processing. This seminal distinction has major implications for the study of consumer information processing. In conditions of high involvement, consumers exposed to mass mediated message arguments have been found to generate support arguments and counterarguments that, in turn, strongly influence their subsequent brand attitudes (e.g. see MacInnis & Jaworski, 1989: 10). What is more, attitudes formed under such conditions of high involvement, and thus induced via the central route, are postulated to be relatively enduring and predictive of behavior (Petty, Cacioppo & Schumann, 1983:
135). As an issue or product increases in personal relevance or consequences, it becomes more important and adaptive to forming a reasoned and veridical opinion (Petty, Cacioppo
& Schumann, 1983: 137). For example, consumers seriously considering to buy a new computer, car, or house (all goods assumed to generate high involvement in average 13 consumers), are expected to process relevant product-related information in a more careful fashion, than are consumers shopping for, say, bread or toothpaste. In the ELM, the latter
(mundane) purchase situations are generally associated with attitudes formed under conditions of low involvement, and thus induced based on peripheral processing of information. Unlike centrally formed attitudes, these are postulated to be relatively temporary and unpredictive of behavior. Examples of message processing under lowinvolvement conditions include reliance on heuristics such as “experts are usually right”,
“long explanations are true”, and “beautiful spokespersons are credible” (see MacInnis &
Jaworski (1989) or Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly (1989) for a review of different heuristics).
13
The term ”average” is used to avoid the fallacy of viewing information processing as a quality inherent in attitude objects. For highly affluent consumers, the purchase of very expensive goods will not necessarily be more consequential than the purchase of mundane products for average people.

From this line of reasoning, it follows that as motivation, ability for argument scrutiny or both increase, peripheral mechanisms become less important determinants of attitude judgment (Chen & Chaiken, 1999: 80) 14 .
However, as pointed out by Friestad and Wright, the ELM is somewhat vague regarding the nature of peripheral cues (Friestad & Wright, 1994: 19). The theory does not explain why particular peripheral cues will operate, or why these cues are supposedly ignored when messages are processed centrally (see also Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).
Furthermore, although Petty, Cacioppo, and their various associates have “loosened up” recently (e.g. see Cacioppo & al., 1992; Petty & Priester, 1994), they still seem to consider the key elements of their theory (e.g. motivation and involvement) as dichotomous constructs. That is, either people are motivated, or they are not. Either people are involved, or they are not. As Giner-Sorolla (1999: 452) has pointed out, this way of thinking seems overly rigid and an unnecessary constraint on the applicability of the model. A more fruitful approach, it seems, would be to regard central and peripheral as poles on a cognitive processing continuum 15 .
Heuristic-Systematic Model
Another influential dual-process model, developed in the same era and similar to the ELM in many respects, is generally referred to as the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM). Although the HSM (Chaiken, 1980) shares a number of fundamental assumptions with the ELM, it nevertheless seems more apt at assessing real-world media reception and persuasive processes. Notably, the HSM assigns greater significance and devotes greater attention to situations in which people are not sufficiently motivated to engage in effortful processing
(e.g. see Chen & Chaiken, 1999, for a recent review). As the name implies, the HSM substitutes the central-peripheral distinction of the ELM with the one between heuristic and systematic. Unlike the ELM, however, the HSM regards heuristic and systematic processing as the upper and lower extreme on a continuum of data seeking, analysis, and integration
(Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989: 212). Similar to the “central route to persuasion” of the
ELM, the upper end, “systematic processing”, is characterized by comprehensive analysis,
14
15
See the section on Fazio’s MODE model (I.5.3) for a discussion of motivation and ability as antecedents of attitude formation
More recent reviews of the ELM have devoted some attention to this revision. However, although Petty and various associates mention the possibility of viewing central and peripheral as extremes on a continuum, the notions are still applied in a dichotomous fashion (e.g. see Petty & Priester, 1994)

evaluation of message arguments and assessment of their validity (Chaiken, 1980: 752).
Heuristic processing, on the other hand, is based on activation and application of more subjective judgmental rules (heuristics) on easily accessible information (often non-content cues), and makes minimal cognitive demands. Chaiken and her associates (1989) define heuristics as learned knowledge structures, used either self-consciously or non-selfconsciously by social perceivers (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989: 213). Differing somewhat from the assumption of the ELM that people are generally motivated to scrutinize incoming information, the HSM holds that situational features such as the presence of heuristic-cue information, as well as its congruence with other available, judgment-relevant information, may largely determine the nature of perceivers’ processing (Chen & Chaiken,
1999: 74). Whether information is processed systematically or heuristically is determined by the presence (absence), conscious or unconscious, of a number of motivations; that is, heuristic processing is not solely the result of insufficient relevant information. Among the determining factors are the motivation to make accurate judgments, the motivation to defend one’s views, and the so-called self-impression motivation (Chen & Chaiken, 1999:
78). In order to guide information processing a heuristic must be available and accessible from memory.
Given the nature of the phenomenon under study here, e.g. the fact that product placements rarely involve arguments as such, the heuristic-systematic model seems more appropriate than the ELM. What is more, research within the heuristic-systematic paradigm shows that distraction often enhances persuasion by interfering with recipients’ ability to counter-argue (Osterhouse & Brock, 1970: 344). The latter finding, though not originally directed at the practice, seems an apt description of the communicative situation in which product placements are normally embedded.
MODE: Motivation and Opportunity as Determinants of Processing
Finally, before turning to the development of specific theories relevant to the study of product placements in television, one last dual-process theory is presented. Similar to the
Elaboration-Likelihood Model and the Heuristic-Systematic Model, the MODE distinguishes between spontaneous (theory-driven) and deliberative (data-driven) processing (Fazio,
1990a; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999). The main asset of the MODE model compared to previous dual-process models is that it integrates several of the key concepts of the present thesis. An addition especially welcome to a study of unobtrusive persuasive communication

is the assumption that media recipients are generally low in involvement and motivation
(Fazio, 1990a: 78), and the attention devoted to examining how this influences the attitude-behavior relationship. Furthermore, the MODE model is an important antecedent of the theory of Strength of Association (SOA) – a theory that attains crucial significance in the experimental part of this study.
The MODE model addresses a number of issues related to information processing, notably how attitudes influence judgment and behavior (e.g. see Fazio & Olson, 2003;
Kardes, 1998, for a review). The MODE acronym refers to the general assumption that
motivation and opportunity are the crucial determinants of which processing mode is likely to operate in any given situation. Given the effortful reflection required for deliberative processing, some motivating force is necessary to induce individuals to engage in the processing. The time and the resources to deliberate – what the model refers to as opportunity – also must exist. In situations that are not characterized by any of the motivating factors, or that are so characterized but do not permit the opportunity for deliberation, any effect of attitude on behavior is hypothesized to operate only through the spontaneous processing mode (Fazio, 1990a; Fazio & Olson, 2003).
The reason why MODE is considered highly relevant in the present context lies in the view of motivation (e.g. involvement) as one of the determinants of information processing and subsequent production of support and counterarguments. Above, it has been argued that our theory of indirect effects is most interesting in a low-involvement context, and that persuasive communication normally occurs in such contexts. Supporting this view and drawing upon the insights of the MODE model, television in general and television fiction in particular have also typically been regarded as a low-opportunity medium (Krugman, 1967:
585) due to the high pace of information and the relatively limited control over exposure assigned to recipients 16 . Specifically, product placements rarely contain any arguments, and thus are not very likely to generate supporting or opposing arguments in viewers (Batra &
Ray, 1986b: 234). Hence, contrary to the main assumption of the ELM, we assign much of the effectiveness of product placements to the fact that they are most likely processed peripherally. Embedded in fiction as they are, product placements are not likely to receive the same degree of critical scrutiny as overtly persuasive communication and other types of non-fictional communication (see Prentice & Gerrig (1999) for a discussion of fiction versus
16 Although television viewers have the power to turn the TV on and off and to change the channel at will, once the exposure has been accepted, it cannot be controlled to the extent possible in print media

reality in information processing). In the explicit framework of Fazio’s model, belief in fiction is determined not by a critical analysis of the strength of its arguments but instead by the absence of motivation or opportunity to perform such analysis (Prentice & Gerrig,
1999: 530). When people are busy responding to an ongoing narrative, they do not have available to them the cognitive resources to generate disbelief (Prentice & Gerrig, 1999:
530).

II. Product Placement
In order to identify and investigate the psychological processes that underlie the effects of product placement, we must first establish a coherent conceptual model of the technique.
In this section this is done by reviewing past efforts at defining product placement and past research on various aspects of its functioning. As already indicated, we mainly focus on the potential of placements to influence viewers’ attitudes and behavior. In the following, we elaborate on the idea that the subtlety of placements may well be the main reason why researchers have had such difficulty showing any consistent resulting changes in viewers’ self-reported attitudes and behavioral intentions.
By addressing general psychological mechanisms, this study is not tied to actual developments in a specific country or media market. For a number of reasons, however, references to regulations and consumption focus on the U.S. First, this thesis reports on research that was carried out in the U.S.
17 Second, the vast majority of previous studies and thus the basis of the subsequent review were conducted in the U.S. Finally, the past decades have shown that media developments originally occurring in the U.S. tend to proliferate to other markets over time. Hence, it seems reasonable to assume that many of the trends mentioned here will eventually manifest themselves in Europe as well.
Previous Definitions
Perhaps part of the reason for the problems listed immediately above is that although product placement is nothing new, adequate definitions of this technique of “deliberate insertion of branded products into entertainment programs” (Law & Braun-LaTour, 2004:
63) are still in development. That is, since the emergence of academic studies addressing the phenomenon, product placement (sometimes referred to as “brand placement” 18 ) has been defined in a number of different ways. In one of the first attempts to study the practice comprehensively Balasubramanian viewed product placement as “[a] paid product message aimed at influencing movie (or television) audiences via the planned and unobtrusive entry of a branded product into a movie (or television program)”
17
The experimental research reported below was conducted at the University of Texas at Austin in October,
2004.
18
Advocates of the term “brand placement” (e.g. Karrh, 1998) usually argue that the goal of the practice is promoting a brand rather than a product type (e.g. Ray Ban rather than sunglasses). However, we argue that the visible part of the practice involves placing actual products.

(Balasubramanian, 1994: 31). By including the “unobtrusive” and “paid” dimensions 19 ,
Balasubramanian addressed two crucial points, which seemingly eluded Gupta and Gould in their simplistic definition of product placement as “the practice of placing brand name products in movies as props” (Gupta & Gould, 1997: 40). Something similar applies to
Steortz (1987), although her definition is more specific in terms of the “product message”.
Hence, Steortz defined the practice as “the inclusion of a brand name product package, signage, or other trademark merchandise within a motion picture, television show, or music video”. Of the definitions available from previously published research, this study advocates the one presented by Karrh: “The paid inclusion of branded products or brand identifiers, through audio and/or visual means within mass media programming” (Karrh & al, 2003:
138). Karrh’s definition is preferred due to its inclusiveness; that is, by using “brand identifiers” and “mass media programming” Karrh avoids some of the unnecessary restraints that applied to earlier definitions. Hence, Karrh’s definition is a more apt description of contemporary media. However, considering that many placements still do not involve financial compensation 20 , one might suggest substituting “paid” with “purposeful”. Finally, it must be noted that this discussion of previous definitions may be somewhat biased by the present study’s focus on television. A definition that removed “paid” and “mass” and substituted “programming” with “content” would be better suited for new developments in novels, songs, video games, internet etc. (e.g. see Fisher & Wagner, 2004: 1).
Practical Aspects
Contrary to what most people may think, placing products and brands in mass media programming has been a known practice, at least since the 1930s (Karrh, 1998: 35). Early on, placements were usually negotiated on a barter basis, free props in return for exposure, but for some decades now, the practice of paid placements has been well known. Most observers agree that the placement of Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces in E.T. – The Extra
Terrestrial (1982) played a crucial role in drawing attention to a vast potential. Hence, sales of the candy are reported to have increased 65 per cent as a result of the placement
19 identifiers, e.g. in news (Avery & Ferraro, 2000)
20
The ”paid” dimension distinguishes actual product placement from random appearances of brands and brand
See ”Practical Aspects” for a discussion

(Buss, 1998) 21 . The current extent to which product placements are done in return for financial compensation is a matter of some dispute among the scholars that have studied the phenomenon. Whereas Karrh (1998: 35) claims that 85 per cent of all placements are still done on a barter basis, others find this picture overly romantic. Indeed, if one considers the existence of professional placement agencies (Redvall, 2000: 93) and the fact that filmmakers are not required to identify paid placements as such (Yang, Roskos-
Ewoldsen, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2004: 81), it seems reasonable to assume that prominently featured brands have offered some compensation or other consideration in exchange for the appearance 22 . Especially when the placements include mundane and inexpensive products, it is hard to imagine other incentives than the commercial. That is, when television and film producers need, say, a car to feature in a scene, engaging in a barter deal with an auto manufacturer is a way of reducing production costs. Clearly, in the case of laundry detergent or milk, this cost-incentive is less prevalent.
When studying product placement in visual media it is crucial to distinguish between movies and television, and, within the latter category, between fiction and other genres.
Compared to movies, television programming is much more strictly regulated 23 , and paid placements are not permitted unless the featured brand is listed as a sponsor (Ferraro &
Avery, 2000: 1). However, placements made through an agency bypass these regulations; marketers are allowed to pay placement firms a retainer to set up favorable deals, and the production companies accept goods as barter to help defray costs. Hence, in the past decade or so, product placement has become a very sophisticated (and somewhat clandestine) business, with placement agencies reviewing scripts in an effort to find product placement opportunities for their marketer clients (McCarty, 2004: 46). As a result, placements are occurring more and more frequently in television programs, and product placement is on the way to becoming a very important revenue source for broadcast television networks - especially in the United States. Networks depend on ad revenue to
21
22
Other successful examples that are often mentioned are the placement of Red Stripe beer in The Firm
(1993), Junior Mints in a episode of Seinfeld (1990), and, perhaps most famous of all, the numerous placements in James Bond movies (Buss, 1998).
Prices for placements in movies are reported to vary from $50,000 - $350,000 and to be steadily growing
(Karrh, 1998). Known examples from the television context include $3,400 for a 3-second walk by in front of a supermarket aisle featuring All detergent in Sex and the City, $22,980 for a a 7-second close up of Sunlight on
Everybody Loves Raymond, and $226,536 for a lengthy Friends placement for Snuggle, including actual handling of the package (Advertising Age, 74(48))
23 In the U.S. the practice is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in Denmark, by the
Ombudsmand of consumer affairs under the general guidelines of marketing laws [Markedsføringsloven].

survive, and the prevalence of placements within television shows can be expected to escalate as viewers grow increasingly suspicious to traditional advertising and the use of adskip devices and TIVO becomes more common (Karrh & al., 2003: 146) 24 . Hence, in commercial television the traditional view of programs as “products”, viewers as
“consumers”, and advertising as a “price” viewers pay to watch the programs (Meyrowitz,
1985: 73), no longer seems to hold. Rather, in the commercial world of today, the products are the viewers, who are sold to advertisers. Addressing these issues, the US watch dog group Commercial Alert recently filed complaints with the FCC arguing that embedded ads were getting out of control (http://www.commercialalert.org). The group demanded, among other things, that a flashing subtitle “advertisement” should appear for all paid for product inserts. Not considering the absurdities this could lead to (imagine a sign
“advertising” flashing in the midst of a James Bond seduction scene), the case still raises interesting issues. In their complaint, Commercial Alert cited a 2004 survey of 750 media planners showing that 18 per cent had negotiated a product placement over the previous six months, and 26 per cent anticipated working on one during the next six months
(http://www.commercialalert.org).
Together, the developments cited here indicate that product placement is an increasingly important phenomenon in persuasive mass media communication, and that researchers should devote more interest to the practice in the future. How the new development should more specifically be addressed by research is discussed in detail below.
Here suffice it to note that practitioners have apparently already realized that new marketing tactics require new measures. For example, New York based Intermedia
Advertising Group (IAG) recently unveiled a new service which will assess both the recall and viewer attitudes toward product placements and sponsorships. The system looks at the type of product and whether it's mentioned, shown or both; whether the product is shown in the background or foreground; its duration of time on screen; whether it's embedded; how many program segments the product appears in. It also takes into account whether the central character or a bit player uses the product and, perhaps most interestingly, whether viewers see the product placement as positive or negative to the brand in the context of the show (Koh, 2004). However, this scheme doesn’t seem adequate for serious academic effect studies. A product appearance on screen doesn’t necessarily equate to a persuasive
24 Judging from the ongoing debate on advertising forums such as adcritic.com and adadge.com, advertisers and practitioners are fully aware of this potential threat and have addressed the issue for some time.

message. If a viewer sees, say, a bottle of Carlsberg beer in a movie it may well assist with recall, but the content of the overall brand value created in the viewer’s mind is dependent on the context in which the placed product appears. The more specific factors influencing the relationship between placement context and persuasive impact are discussed at much more detail below.
Product Placement As Communication
Although product placement on a larger scale tends to be regarded as a relatively novel phenomenon, the practice has a number of common traits with more traditional forms of persuasive communication. Herein lies much of the rationale behind the theoretical framework of this study: On a general level, product placement can be seen as an example of unobtrusive advertising. More specifically, the practice seems to combine aspects of subliminal advertising and the use of celebrity spokespersons (see e.g. Stafford & al., 2002;
Ohanian, 1990). Perhaps most important to the framework established in the present study is the link between product placement and subliminal advertising. Product placement is not strictly subliminal communication, because products usually have exposure times measured in seconds rather than milliseconds, often with some verbal labeling. However, as Erdelyi and Zizak point out, subliminality was initially understood to be “inaccessibility to consciousness” (Erdelyi & Zizak, 2004: 14), in which case product placements may often be considered to be subliminal. What we argue here is that the effects should be taken to be tacit or implicit because recollection of the brands may be unreliable or unavailable.
Theoretically, both product placements and “real” subliminal communication involve cases where subjects are not aware of stimuli due to lack of attention (unattended messages); stimuli which no act of attention will bring to awareness (subliminal messages); and finally, cases where the subject is attending to the stimuli, of which he is consciously aware, but which cannot be recognized (subrecognition messages) (Groeger, 1984: 305). If one adopts this view, it is evident, as advocated above, that traditional measures focusing on explicit recall and recognition are not adequate for assessing the effectiveness of product placements.
In a slightly different perspective, product placements can be seen as “hybrid messages” (Balasubramanian, 1994: 30); that is, a form of communication that combines key advantages and avoids key disadvantages of advertising and publicity messages,

respectively 25 . Hence, product placement is a unique form of communication that brings together emotional and cognitive responses evoking aspects of both fiction and persuasive communication. Specifically, by virtue of being paid for (purposeful), product placements allow senders to retain some control over message content and, by virtue of being discrete, make the message seem more credible. To fully understand the implications of this, one needs to consider the link to television programming - especially the way reality is mediated and presented on television. In a study addressing the ontology of television programming, Shrum, Burroughs, and Rindfleisch have developed the notion of “distortion of reality” (Shrum, Burroughs, & Rindfleisch, 2004: 179) implying that the world as it is portrayed on television (whether it is fiction or nonfiction) differs in important and sometimes dramatic ways from how the real world is constituted. In an illustration of this,
O’Guinn and Shrum found the world of television to be more affluent and generally demographically different from the real world (O’Guinn & Shrum, 1999: 285). What is interesting about the findings is that exposure to these ‘distorted’ images may result in their internalization by viewers.
Furthermore, by often being inscribed in an serialized narrative (e.g. in TV series) product placements may be able to circumvent the non-monotonical relationship between repetition and effectiveness that compromises the durability of traditional advertising effects (The inverted U-shape: Anand & Sternthal, 1990: 345). What is meant by “nonmonotonical” is that although initial exposure to persuasive communication may affect viewers significantly, the effect tends to wear out relatively quickly. In traditional advertising this wear-out is assumed to occur as viewers grow familiar with a particular ad and thus stop paying attention to it. The superior durability of product placements we suggest here can be linked to an extended shelf life and a more global reach 26 compared to traditional advertising. Whereas ads can be expected to reach a point of wear-out after a certain number of exposures, films and television shows have a greater potential of being rerun and generally attract a higher level of attention and involvement (d’Astous &
Chartier, 2000: 31). Adding to this potential, product placements could be viewed as an example of the ongoing trend toward customization to smaller audiences, i.e. to the
25
26
Other examples of “hybrids” are infomercials, video news releases, and program tie-ins
In the words of one agency executive: “Product placement on The Sopranos is the best of all worlds. You have no commercial messages to compete with. People watch the episodes over and over again. Then they buy them on videotape and DVD — and watch them again." (http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising,
12/2/2002)

“communities of interest” created by audiences of specific programs (Kalyanaraman &
Sundar, 2003: 3). That is, product placement allows advertisers to target very specific audiences because the demographics of who watches which kinds of TV shows is well known by producers (Yang, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2004: 81). In the next section, we explore the marketing implications of the technique in more detail.
Product Placement as Marketing Communication
Product placement can be compared to other forms of marketing communication in a number of ways, in that all product placements as a form of marketing communication share some common aspects with one another, but differ from other forms of marketing communication (McCarty, 2004: 47). In the research interest of the present study, we propose looking at marketing communication along two dimensions: (1) the extent to which the sponsor of the message is disguised, that the message is a paid advertisement is disguised, or both, and (2) the extent to which the persuasive message is secondary to the main message of the communication. As mentioned above, product placement is generally seen as an unobtrusive form of advertising, sometimes even referred to as “stealth advertising”, implying that the technique represents one of the highest degrees of disguise and a totally secondary status to the main message. However, considering the amount of attention the practice does in fact receive in public debate, this account seems somewhat exaggerated. Hence, marketers who still believe in the complete naïveté of viewers concerning product placements may well be revealing the same about themselves
(Bhatnagar, Aksoy, & Malkoc, 2004: 101) 27 . In this section, we review some of the incentives for advertisers to adopt the practice and compare these to aspects of traditional advertising.
Most importantly, product placements are more likely than traditional advertising to gain goodwill from viewers (d’Astous & Séguin, 1999: 905). Whereas traditional advertising has become a phenomenon that most viewers strive to avoid, product placements are
(naturally) embedded in a context viewers actively choose to join. Inclusion in programs reduces the likelihood of zapping (d’Astous & Séguin, 1999: 896) and thus adds an element of “forced exposure” (de Pelsmacker & al., 2002: 52). With channel hopping and new
27
It must be noted, however, that the one Danish study that has addressed the practice of product placement
(Redvall, 2000) treats it as something unknown and unexpected – something toward which viewers don’t have a proper defense.

technologies such as personal video recorders (PVRs) and TIVO, people can actively avoid commercials. Hence, the only way for advertisers to reach them might be when they are engaged in viewing a program that they meant to watch (Elpers & al., 2002: 437; Koh, 2004:
2). While it is easy to run to the kitchen for a soda during a commercial break, viewers are less likely to run to the kitchen in the middle of a program. Moreover, as mentioned above, inclusion in specific programs facilitates advertisers’ access to relevant target groups.
For producers of the mass media programming that “hosts” the placed products, the incentive is mainly financial. In addition to the possible revenue from the actual placement, advertisers often buy traditional advertising space in or surrounding the programs (d’Astous
& Séguin, 1999: 899). Sometimes, product placements are part of a larger marketing tie-in, in which a company agrees to create an ad campaign, a sweepstakes, or some other promotional campaign that complements the studio’s own marketing efforts for the film or
TV series. The flipside of this relationship between placements and other marketing efforts is a difficulty of measuring the specific effectiveness of the technique using traditional methods of business scholarship. That is, by focusing on, say, improvement in overall sales, one doesn’t assess whether product placements or other parts of the marketing mix are accountable for the effects.
Another interesting two-way interaction between media product and consumer product is found on the content-level and was originally cited as one of the main arguments for both advertisers and producers; the inclusion of products, so the argument goes, adds reality to the fictitious media program and credibility to the brand message (Brennan,
Dubas, & Babin, 1999: 323). When executed successfully, product placement can add a sense of realism to a movie or television show that something like a can simply marked
"soda" or a box labeled “cigarettes” cannot. If, however, the inclusion of products seems unrealistic, exaggerated, or phony, viewers are expected to respond with distrust and doubt
(Batra & Ray, 1986b: 238). In these latter cases, watching television programs containing product placements will feel like watching an extremely long commercial. Hence, there's a line that can be crossed when presenting brand-name items as props within the context of a television show. A line marketing practitioners try never to cross. They want their products to be visible within a scene, but not the focus. The product needs to fit, almost seamlessly
(almost being the key word here) into the shot and context of the scene.

Analyzing Product Placement
Since the advent of academic research in product placement, scholars have analyzed the phenomenon from very different, though not mutually exclusive, vantage points (see Fisher
& Wagner (2004) for an exhaustive review). Roughly speaking, previously published research can be divided into (1) studies of variations in placements, (2) studies of viewers’ reception, and (3) studies of outcomes. Within these analytical frameworks, a wide array of variables has been examined. To provide an overview of important past research as well as outline directions for future work, the variables are here divided into characteristics of program content, characteristics of characters, characteristics of products, and characteristics of execution. As the references indicate, some of the mentioned characteristics have already been studied in a product placement context 28 , some have been studied in traditional advertising, and some are yet to receive analytical attention. This section serves as an overall guide to potential research areas; the specific findings produced by past research are presented in a subsequent section.
Research in content characteristics has mainly focused on genre, e.g. how the overall style of a program has the potential to significantly alter viewers’ reactions to a placement (Dambron, 1991), and program-induced mood, e.g. how the affective quality of different program contexts evokes differing levels and types of empathy (Lord & al., 2001).
On a more specific level, research has investigated the congruence between programinduced mood and product-induced mood, and found this congruence to increase recall
(Lord & al., 2001).
Among the character characteristics that have attracted researchers’ attention are character-product continuity (i.e. the perceived strength of the relationship between a placed product and the associated character; see Deighton, Romer, & McQueen, 1989;
DeLorme & Reid, 1999), content centrality (Fisher & Wagner, 2004), as well as the credibility (Ohanian, 1990) and likeability (McGuire, 2001) of the associated character.
Research in brand characteristics has focused mainly on familiarity; that is, on the relation between previous activation from short or long term memory of brand-related stimuli and the amount of cognitive elaboration required for processing a placement
(Russell, 2002). Other brand characteristics that could be studied in the future are
28
The fact that a variable has been studied does not necessarily indicate that we consider this variable to have been adequately assessed. Hence, much of the research referenced in this section has been done from the vantage point of the memory paradigm.

topicality, e.g. level of social importance, and product life cycle, i.e. whether product placements are especially effective for promoting new or well-known brands.
Most work has been done within the area of execution characteristics . Russell
(2002) proposed and applied a taxonomy of modalities distinguishing between placements that are visual, auditory, and audiovisual. Other research has examined the prominence of placements, i.e. the extent to which the product placement possesses characteristics designed to make it a central focus of audience attention (Gupta & Lord, 1998; Russell,
2002). Research on prominence has usually divided placements into “subtle” and
“prominent” (Gupta & Lord, 1998: 49) or “creative” and “on-set” (Brennan, Dubas, & Babin,
1999: 323). Closely related to research on prominence, a number of studies have addressed the content-connection of placed products; that is, the integration of products into the
‘hosting’ media product (Russell, 2002). Finally, one published study has assessed the amount of content devoted to a placed product and how this affects effectiveness (Karrh,
2003).
However, studying characteristics of the placement itself is not sufficient to achieve a comprehensive understanding of how product placements work. In order to understand effects on viewers one needs to take into account individual and situational differences of the reception context as well. Especially, as is the case for all kinds of effect studies, product placement research must consider the cultural and social background of the receivers. Research in traditional advertising has shown substantial differences in reception relative to high-context and low-context cultures (Gupta & Lord, 1998: 58). Something similar may well be the case for product placements. Moreover, it seems crucial to consider viewers’ receptiveness and desire to “go along” with the fictitious context established with product placements, e.g. viewers “desire to emulate” (Karrh, 1998: 43) and willingness to bridge the identity gap between themselves and the fictitious characters. Finally, related to the dual-process framework of this study 29 , one must assess viewers’ attention intensity, e.g. opportunity to process, level of prior knowledge etc.
Together, the characteristics of the placement and specific reception contexts constitute the independent variables of effect studies in product placement. However, before engaging in experimental research one needs to outline the potential dependent variables as well. Similar to what was done above, these dependent variables are here
29
See sections on dual-process models and MODE above

divided into three categories, namely (1) cognitive, (2) affective, and (3) conative. Among the potential cognitive (thinking) variables, one finds awareness (Leckenby & Wedding,
1982), recognition (Russell, 2002), and beliefs (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). As indicated in previous sections, this cognitive category has received by far the most attention from previous research in persuasive communication. Less work has been done on variables belonging to the affective (feeling) category. In fact, it is only very recently that convincing applications of these variables have begun to emerge in product placement studies and related research. Here, we draw attention to Fazio’s seminal work on attitudes (e.g. see
Fazio, 1990), and especially Wagner and Sundar’s analysis of strength of association (SOA:
Wagner & Sundar, 2003). The SOA concept, assessing the likelihood that an attitude is activated upon priming with a relevant stimulus, is crucial to this study and shall be discussed in detail below. Even less work has been done in the area of conative (behaving) variables. In fact, behavioral analysis such as eye-tracking and assessment of purchase intention has mostly been mentioned by researchers as potentially fruitful avenues of future study.
Theories of How Product Placement Works
As noted above, the primary goal of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of product placement as a form of persuasive communication. More specifically, what is addressed is the formation and change of attitudes as a result of exposure to mass media (television) stimuli and the subsequent transformation of these attitudes into behavior. The nature of the attitude-behavior relationship is discussed below; here we seek to establish a general framework of relevant effectiveness dimensions. In order to do so, we draw upon some of the insights presented above, notably the conceptual link between product placement and the use of subliminal stimuli, and findings from social psychology research on non-conscious information processing. The rationale behind this transfer of theory lies in the conception of product placements as dependent on unattended stimuli; that is, the way placements are hypothesized to function is closely related to the way in which subliminal social primes have been shown to influence subsequent judgments (e.g. see Pratkanis & Greenwald, 1988).
Furthermore, research in non-conscious processing provides a rationale for focusing on attitudes as opposed to recall and recognition. Hence, studies (e.g. Wilson, 1979) have shown that non-conscious processing of information led to increased liking, but not
recognition for stimuli presented to the unattended channel. However, acknowledging that

the type of product placements studied here is a phenomenon inescapably linked to the television medium, the theories must seek inspiration from media studies as well.
To establish a macro-level framework, one may draw upon previous theory and research within the area of media sociology. For example, the assumption that television has long since supplanted reading, interpersonal narrative, and other traditional media as our primary means of storytelling and myth delivery (McLuhan, 1964; Silverstone, 1991) has obvious implications for the status of televised communication as an agent of socialization.
Moreover, in the present context, where televised fiction is analyzed as a potentially powerful conveyer of information about real world phenomena, it seems relevant to draw on Ong’s theories of the other-than-real world that is created by the medium. According to
Ong (see Silverstone, 1991, for a review) the television world is not quite life, but still more than fiction. Hence, it can be seen as television’s peculiar capacity to establish a sense of presence and blur the live and the recorded, the real and the imagined, the spontaneous and the rehearsed. Across different works in media sociology, there seems to be a general consensus that media images in general and television in particular have the power to cultivate individuals’ perceptions and attitudes. Below we discuss some of the processes by which this influence may occur.
Persuasion
As a consequence of questioning the notion of conscious influence, the present study must depart from the influential definition of persuasion as something that occurs when the audience has “tested and accepted the truth of a claim of value” (Deighton, Romer, &
McQueen, 1989: 336). Whereas such evaluation of argument quality is related to central route processes (Kahle & Homer, 1985: 954), we assume product placements to be processed more peripherally and thus to rely on other mechanisms for effectiveness.
Although the ‘host’ program itself may be processed centrally, in terms of content or execution, due to their unobtrusive nature the placed products are assumed to serve as peripheral cues. One way to illustrate this hypothesized difference is by comparison with studies in traditional advertising. As noted above, a large body of research has addressed the non-monotonical relation between exposure and persuasion that occurs due to wear-out mechanisms in the reception of traditional ads (Batra & Ray, 1986a: 442). Briefly stated,
Batra and Ray show how increasing the number of exposures does not necessarily increase persuasive power. On the contrary, “too many” exposures to the same media product may

lead to wear-out; that is to an increase in the production of counterarguments. In the context of product placement this wear out, and, as a result, generation of counterarguments seems less likely to occur. Among the possible reasons one could mention that viewers are less accustomed to the reception of product placements and thus less suspicious to the persuasion attempt, or that product placements are embedded in a context that typically generates more possible feelings in viewers. This in turn leads us to consider (1) the influence of mood on persuasive impact and (2) theories of viewers’ knowledge about persuasive strategies.
Mood
Most research on the relationship between mood and reactions to persuasive communication has been done within the field of traditional advertising and has focused on recall and recognition (Shrum, 1999; Goldberg & Gorn, 1987; Lord, Burnkrant, & Unnava, 2001). For example, previous studies have shown that when elaboration-likelihood is high, mood is predicative of the thoughts generated in response to a message (Wegener, Petty & Klein,
1994: 39). Although this finding is interesting, it isn’t directly transferable to the low elaboration-likelihood associated with product placements. In fact, Wegener, Petty, and
Klein (1994: 39) report no significant effect under low-elaboration conditions. However, another study (Erber, 1991) has shown that mood, especially at the time of encoding, makes affectively congruent material more accessible in memory leading to “biases” in retrieval of information (Erber, 1991: 483). Hence, it may be hypothesized that less conscious attitudes formed under conditions of positive mood (e.g. while watching one’s favorite television show) are activated more easily in a subsequent decision situation evoking a similar mood.
In terms of consumer decision-making, Erber’s findings indicate that the one brand among many, for which brand-attitudes have been formed under pleasant conditions, will automatically attract more positive thoughts when encountered at the point of purchase.
This line of reasoning received some support from a study (Goldberg & Gorn, 1987) in traditional advertising showing that relative to sad programs, happy programs induced greater perceived commercial effectiveness and more affectively positive cognitive responses (Goldberg & Gorn, 1987: 398). However, some researchers’ claim that mood congruent information tends to be processed more elaborately makes it premature to simply accept the mood congruency theory in the area of product placements.

Persuasion Knowledge Model
Addressing the second issue mentioned above, viewers’ knowledge about persuasion strategies, Friestad and Wright have developed an elaborate model (Persuasion Knowledge
Model; Friestad & Wright, 1994) stating how consumers gradually gain more insight into various persuasion attempts and thus become increasingly immune to them. Hence, a claim that product placements are effective as a means of persuasion could be backed by arguing that the practice is still relatively novel and that viewers therefore may not yet be fully aware of its persuasive agenda. Acknowledging the appeal of this theory we now turn to a more detailed discussion of the potential applicability of the Persuasion Knowledge Model
(PKM). More specifically, the PKM assumes that an observable feature, or pattern of features, of a persuasion attempt takes on meaning to people as a persuasion strategy only if they perceive a causal connection between it and a psychological activity they believe mediates persuasion (Friestad & Wright, 1994: 4). Furthermore, the model describes how people identify for themselves an overriding goal of “effectiveness in persuasion coping”.
Although Friestad and Wright theorize on a very psychological and not very tangible level, the real world implications are obvious. For example, the model could be used to explain the widespread reluctance among people to admit being influenced by persuasive communication. Hence, if Friestad and Wright’s theory is plausible, the chances of finding any conscious and self-reported effects of advertising seem very limited. Interestingly,
Friestad and Wright assign much of the development of persuasion knowledge to (1) scholarly insight made commonly accessible (e.g. through popular press) and (2) what is taught in schools. Especially the latter antecedent of persuasion knowledge seems relevant in the present context. Whereas analyzing traditional advertising is a common discipline in the educational system, product placement is treated to a much lesser extent. Following this line of reasoning, one may expect people to have a well-established defense mechanism that is automatically activated when identifiable advertising stimuli are encountered. Conversely, product placements due to their unobtrusiveness may not lead to such activation. To elaborate one may draw upon the parallel to subliminal communication introduced above. By being ‘hidden’ product placements can be expected to circumvent people’s defense mechanisms: If focal consciousness were fully deployed on advertising claims, receivers might well reject them on the basis of logic or reality. If, however, consciousness is degraded, it may fail to inhibit more primitive (and credulous) subsystems.

Although the attributes of the PKM are here presented as if they were all but universal, any application of the model needs to consider potential personal differences.
Addressing these differences, Heesacker & al. (1983) found that some people are more disposed to attend to social/contextual features (field dependent) whereas others are more disposed to extract meaning from content features (field independent) (Heesacker & al.,
1983: 665). Applied to product placements, this finding indicates a higher likelihood of affecting field dependent receivers; that is, receivers that are less likely to question the intentions of the characters acting or speaking in favor of the placed product. To elaborate on Heesacker’s distinction, one may expect field independent receivers to question why someone speaking on behalf of a marketer has chosen to advocate the product he is endorsing (Friestad & Wright, 1994: 21), and to be skeptical toward spokespersons that are obviously paid.
A slightly different line of research has linked persuasion knowledge more closely to mode of information processing and rendered additional support to the persuasive effectiveness of less conscious processing. For example, Campbell and Keller (2003) state that low-level (peripheral) processing leads individuals to focus on content, whereas highlevel (central) processing is more likely to lead to scrutiny of the tactics, formations of counterarguments and thus to a decrease in persuasiveness (Campbell & Keller, 2003: 294).
In summary, the theories mentioned here seem to be very skeptical as to the potential of traditional advertising. After all, people know they are being persuaded by a biased source and can appropriately source-discount. The flip side of that reason indicates why the notion of subliminal advertising is so feared and reviled by consumers – the notion that they could be persuaded without their knowledge and thus be deprived of their ability to defend themselves (Shrum, 2004: xv).
Classical Conditioning
An alternative explanation of product placements’ persuasive potential draws on one of the most famous theories in social psychology. The seminal work on classical conditioning
(sometimes referred to as respondent conditioning) was done by Pavlov in the early 20 th century 30 . When used in a contemporary context, the notion of classical conditioning refers to an affective, non-cognitive process (Stuart, Shimp, & Engle, 1987: 334) by which
30 Especially the study, in which Pavlov made dogs salivate upon hearing a bell that had previously been associated with food, is often cited.

responses to one stimulus are automatically associated with a conceptually unrelated stimulus. In advertising research, classical conditioning can be defined as the presentation of a product (conditioned stimulus) along with some other element (unconditioned stimulus) that elicits pleasant attitudinal response (conditioned response) to later elicit similar positive responses to the product presented alone (Stuart, Shimp & Engle, 1987: 335;
Erdelyi & Zizak, 2004: 23). Potentially, classical conditioning could be used to explain many processes by which communication is used to achieve attitude change in receivers. As an example relevant to the study of product placement, the use of a character who arouses positive affect in receivers may lead to a transfer of affect to the product (Gorn, 1982: 97).
Hence, advertisers aim to create a positive “paired association” between unconditioned stimulus (e.g. a favorable endorser image) and a conditioned stimulus (e.g. a brand)
(Balasubramanian, 1994: 38). The reason why classical conditioning is introduced here is that much contemporary advertising, including product placement, appears to be structured so that such conditioning is likely to occur. Moreover, past research indicates that classical conditioning does in fact have the power to influence brand attitudes and behavior (Gorn,
1982: 100). Taking this perspective to the extreme, one may claim that the very reason for the unobtrusive nature of product placements is the potential for classical conditioning; that is, the hope that viewers will attach their feelings toward the characters and shows to the products (Karrh, 1998: 34; DeLorme & Reid, 1999: 79).
A review of previous research assessing the more specific potential of classical conditioning reveals a number of interesting trends. For example, McSweeney and Bierley
(1984) found classical conditioning to be most effective for products that are not frequently encountered or thought about outside the advertising context (327). This, in turn, indicates that the mechanism may be best suited for promoting mundane products such as laundry detergent, inexpensive personal hygiene and food products 31 . Moreover, classical conditioning has been found to be more effective for products about which consumers have limited prior knowledge (Cacioppo & al., 1992: 220); that is, the process is presumably more powerful in attitude formation than in attitude change. Finally, in a study that renders intuitive support to the practice of product placement, McSweeney and Bierley
(1984: 327) found that, in order to be effective, advertisements must be as similar as possible to the situation in which people will actually encounter the product. Although
31 Although some of the products mentioned here are used on a daily basis, we assume the use to be of a little involving nature, and thus the purchase to be less conscious.

pointing to an interesting potential, these findings also indicate that classical conditioning has limitations. For advertisers who want to promote more frequently used and more consequential products, and products that are already well established, classical conditioning may not be the best approach. Furthermore, basing product placements on classical conditioning through characters on screen creates the risk of “overshadowing”; that is, if characters are overly salient, product attitudes may be left unchanged
(McSweeney & Bierley, 1984: 629).
On the executional level, however, the existence and fruitfulness of classical conditioning in product placement seems to be well documented. First, in the previously cited study, McSweeney and Bierley found that classically conditioned responses normally do not appear full blown until after the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli have been paired a number of times (McSweeney & Bierly, 1984: 625). This indicates that traditional ads created to generate classical conditioning may fail due to the wear-out mechanisms described above and that a more successful strategy may be the pairing of products with well-liked characters in serialized fictional narratives. Following this argument, the repeated pairing of Omega watches with James Bond should be a better way to achieve a positive association than numerous commercials and print ads pairing the same product with
Cindy Crawford, Anna Kournikova, and other real world celebrities. In fact, this hypothesized difference in persuasiveness is attributable to a synthesis between classical conditioning and persuasion knowledge. Somewhat ironically one might claim that a sports star or fashion model endorsing a product unrelated to her profession seems less trustworthy than a fictitious aristocrat playboy. A second study (Bierley & al., 1985) lends support to the potential of fictitious stimuli to create classical conditioning. Whereas one might expect receivers to actively “filter out” persuasive attempts such as the James Bond-
Omega connection, Bierly and her associates found that people didn’t necessarily need to be aware of the process for classical conditioning to occur (Bierley & al., 1985: 320). Hence, instead of seeing through the spokesperson in order to form attitudes toward the “real” agents (i.e. the companies behind the ads), viewers of film and other audiovisual fiction may accept the presence of branded products as something more natural and not even notice that a persuasive attempt is being made. In the next section, we further elaborate on the pairing of characters with placed products and its potential as a means to attitude and behavioral change.

The Modeling Paradigm
Regardless of what dimension of effectiveness researchers choose to apply to product placement, nobody seems to disagree about the key characteristics of the technique.
Essentially, product placements aim at achieving a goal, whether it is recall, attitude change, or behavior, by having viewers observe the actions of others (models) and the consequences of those actions (Nord & Peter, 1980: 40). The present section examines in more detail the nature of this observation drawing on both theories of social learning and previous research in persuasive communication.
In the seminal works of social learning theory, Bandura (1973; Bandura, 1994) describes the expansion of knowledge and skills that can occur when people process information conveyed by modeling influences; that is, by watching other people’s behavior and its consequences for them (Bandura, 1994: 66). According to Bandura, a great deal of information about human values, thinking patterns, and behavior is gained from models portrayed symbolically through verbal or pictorial means (Bandura, 1994: 68). Although
Bandura is not explicitly concerned with persuasive mass media communication, the experiments dealt with aggressive behavior in children, his theory is never the less applicable in the present context. Adapting the focus somewhat, one might hypothesize that product demonstrations through models (e.g. actors) have the capacity to facilitate learning and spark viewers’ desire to emulate (Balasubramanian, 1994: 38). However, the fact that Bandura’s theory deals with real people performing real behavior raises interesting questions to the study of product placement. Compared to real people and to the personae of traditional advertising, characters in product placement have a status somewhere in between. Understanding this status seems crucial to assessing the persuasive potential of product placements. Hence, if characters are perceived to be more real than fictitious, one may apply theories of interpersonal influence. If, on the other hand, characters are perceived as purely fictitious, it will be more relevant to draw upon previous research on spokesperson characteristics in advertising. Judging from the way placements are typically done, one gets the impression that practitioners advocate the former interpretation (e.g. see Bearden & al., 1989: 473). The very practice, especially the portrayal of products being consumed in social situations, seems to rely on the influence of others as an important determinant of an individual’s behavior. When a claim rests on subjective grounds, as is often the case in advertising, the advantage of product placement over more traditional forms is that it does not have to reduce the subjective experience to words and then

depend on the credibility of a narrator to communicate it. Instead it can depict the experience directly, with the aim of evoking the feeling itself in its audience (Deighton,
Romer, & McQueen, 1989: 336).
However, the most fruitful approach may still be to fuse theories from the domains of social interaction and advertising studies. Although product placements undoubtedly aim at creating the illusion of interpersonal interaction, the practice still draws on some of the source characteristics of traditional advertising. In one relevant study, Ohanian (1990) demonstrated a significant influence of communicators’ positive characteristics on receivers’ acceptance of a message. More specifically, Ohanian found trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness to be the main factors of source credibility (Ohanian, 1990:
47). Hence, in a conscious paradigm these dimensions of a celebrity endorser’s source credibility along with consumer demographics and psychographics, can be used as potential predictors of attitude toward and intention to purchase a specific product. Also within the context of effect studies based on self-report, early research found attractiveness and credibility to influence attitude but not recall (Joseph, 1982: 19), and to be effective only under conditions of low ego-involvement (Johnson & Izzett, 1970: 81; Heesacker & al.,
1983: 664). Although the present study departs from the conscious approach, it still seems likely that similar processes are at work on a less explicit level.
Another dimension relevant to the special status of product placements between real world and fiction is the distinction between direct and indirect experience. Of course, direct experience per se is formed through actual physical interaction with an object.
However, it seems plausible that the experience formed through exposure to products placed in television shows is more direct than the experience one can have by simply reading or viewing traditional advertising. Research in television shows indicates two ways in which these can be considered a substitute for direct experience. First, viewers may be aware that the source of information is television but still consider the exemplars relevant.
Second, viewers may not consider television portrayals to be veridical (low perceived reality) but they also may not ascertain the source of the exemplars recalled when they construct their judgments (Shrum, 1999: 128). Interestingly, attitudes and attitude accessibility are hypothesized to change most dramatically through direct experience.
Hence, it is essential for research inspired by the modeling paradigm to examine the extent to which character associations and attitudes travel from the drama context to the consumer context.

Before we conclude the discussion of the effectiveness dimension, it must be noted that although this study focuses on attitudes and attitude-related persuasiveness, we do not imply that product placement should be discarded as a powerful means to generate recall and recognition. On the contrary, placements are very effective in this respect, possibly due to the salience of product information in a context where it is less challenged by surrounding messages. The reasons why the recall dimension has not received more attention are (1) that the topic has already been sufficiently treated in previous research
(see below for a review of previous research) and (2) that we do not consider recall to be an adequate measure of persuasiveness.
In summary, this section has suggested four ways by which product placement may be effective as an agent of attitude formation and change. Previous research on the influence of mood, knowledge of persuasion strategies, classical conditioning, and learning through modeling was reviewed and adapted to the context of this study. It has not been the goal of this review to perform a comparative evaluation; rather the various theories have been introduced as equally valid and equally applicable depending on the exact nature of study.
Academic Studies of Product Placement
Unlike previous sections we here focus on past research explicitly dealing with product placements; that is, instead of seeking inspiration from surrounding areas and adapting relevant related theories, we attempt an up-to-date presentation of the work that has actually been done on product placements. Albeit limited in number 32 , previous research can be classified as: content analysis of placements in various media; surveys of practitioners; qualitative studies of placement’s meaning to audiences; studies of audience knowledge of and inferences about placements; and experimental studies testing memory, attitude change, and/or purchase intention (Karrh, 1998). Among these, the majority of studies has focused on the technique’s impact on viewer memory and investigated the effects of product placement on brand recall and recognition (e.g. Babin & Carder, 1996b;
Karrh, 1994). Research has demonstrated that prominently displayed brands enjoy higher recall and recognition compared to brands placed less conspicuously (Brennan, Dubas, &
32 Especially research on product placements in television has been all but non-existent; the work that has been done has mainly addressed the phenomenon in the movie context

Babin, 1999: 323; Gupta & Lord, 1998: 47) and that audio-only placements better impact viewers’ memory than do visual-only placements (d’Astous & Chartier, 2000: 39).
Placements combining the two modes have been found to elicit the highest recall and recognition (Karrh & al., 2003: 146).
Interestingly, the impact of product placements on actual consumer behavior has mostly been addressed through speculation. Up until 2003 all empirical studies focused on the technique’s impact on viewer memory and measured effectiveness in terms of awareness and recognition. Perhaps for this reason, no studies had shown product placements to have any impact on viewers’ attitudes toward the brands. However, all of these studies (Babin & Carder, 1996a; Babin & Carder, 1996b; Karrh, 1994; Ong & Meri,
1994; Vollmers & Mizerski, 1994) assessed brand-related attitudes through self-report measures. Researchers and, so it seems, practitioners have apparently equated effectiveness with recall and recognition 33 . Hence, as pointed out by Law and Braun, the lack of demonstrated impact on attitudes and subsequent behavior may well be a methodological issue (Law & Braun, 2000: 1059).
The first study to depart from the reliance on self-report was done by Andriasova and
Wagner (2004). Hypothesizing that self-report measures tend to misrepresent actual effects on attitudes (see above for a discussion), Andriasova and Wagner applied the unobtrusive
Implicit Association Test and focused on placements’ impact on the strength of viewers’ product-related associations. Whereas previous studies had failed to detect any change in viewers’ self-reported attitudes, Andriasova and Wagner showed that placements could influence consumers’ product-related strength of association and thus be a powerful agent of persuasion. Both unobtrusive measures and strength of association are discussed extensively below. Here suffice it to note that the Andriasova and Wagner (2004) study was the first to demonstrate product placements’ affects beyond the cognitive level.
33 As reported by Brennan, Dubas, & Babin (1999: 326), many practitioners deem placements effective when a minimum of 20 per cent of the audience is aware of the identity of a placed brand

3. How Attitudes Guide Behavior: An Automatic Process
Above, previous research in advertising and product placement has repeatedly been lamented for its focus on recall and recognition. The main argument has been that measuring memory does not equate to measuring actual effectiveness, that is, whether the communication leads to persuasion and subsequent behavior. Hence, the challenge is to develop an alternative scheme that more aptly measures whether exposure to a given persuasive stimulus leads recipients to change their behavior. However, in the present context, a reliable experimental assessment of actual behavior seems all but impossible.
Although many potential threats to external validity can successfully be eliminated, it is very difficult to simulate real world consumption behavior in laboratory settings. The few previous studies that have investigated effectiveness in terms of behavior (as opposed to self-reported behavioral intention) have mostly sought to establish simulated consumption environments, e.g. by having research subjects ‘buy’ one among an array of available products as compensation for their participation (Law & Braun, 2000: 1065). However, we find the external validity of such simulations to be highly questionable. Herein lies one of the crucial challenges to this study, compared to the social psychology research from which it draws inspiration - e.g. work on stereotyping (Bargh, 1999) and racial prejudice (Fazio & al., 1995; Lowery & al., 2001), where behavior can be assessed more directly 34 . To resolve this methodological problem we propose an assessment of effectiveness that links emotional and conative dependent variables. More specifically, this is done by introducing attitude as a mediator between exposure and behavior. Using the attitude-construct this way is a strategy well supported by past research in related disciplines. For example, previous studies (e.g. Hastie & Park, 1986) have indicated that people are generally reluctant to consult long-term memory for evidence on which to base a judgment, thus implying that other variables must be at work (Hastie & Park, 1986: 262). In the following sections, we argue that attitude is indeed such variable, and thus a useful construct on which the experimental study of effectiveness can be based.
Defining Attitudes
34 One parsimonious scheme for assessing the effect of racial prejudice on behavior is to have participants interact with experimenters of the given race

Since Allport’s influential work (Allport, 1935), several theorists have sought to define the concept of attitudes. Among the available definitions this study mainly draws on the one presented by Fazio of attitude as “the association in memory of a given object and a given summary evaluation of the object” (Fazio & al., 2000: 8). Hence, in our view attitudes are organized around responses to real or imagined objects and evaluative in nature. As reviews of the use of attitudes within social psychology reveal, the concept of attitude is closely related to, and sometimes used interchangeably with, that of affect (e.g. see Giner-Sorolla,
1999; Hoffman, 1986). However, in the present context it seems more fruitful to view attitudes as consisting of affective, cognitive, and behavioral components (Edell & Burke,
1987: 431). The affective component reflects an individual’s general feelings or emotions toward an object. The cognitive component represents one’s awareness of and knowledge about an object. The behavioral component includes intentions and behavioral expectations and reflects a predisposition to action (Zikmund, 1997: 340). This conception has previously been applied in advertising research, e.g. by Shimp (1981: 10) who assigned the first two components – affective and cognitive - to his attitude-toward-the-ad (A ad
) construct. In an elaboration of Shimp’s theory, McKenzie and Lutz (1989) added the behavioral dimension and defined A ad
as the predisposition to respond in a favorable or unfavorable manner to a particular advertising stimulus during a particular exposure condition (McKenzie & Lutz,
1989: 49). There has been some debate as to whether attitudes should be conceptualized as
(1) persistent mentally represented summary evaluations (the so-called “file drawer” metaphor), or (2) temporary constructions created when an attitudinal judgment is needed.
Claiming that attitudes are the sum of all object-related (brand-related) beliefs and their evaluation, as has been done by advocates of the ELM, leads to the assumption that centrally induced attitudes are more persistent (Petty, Cacioppo & Schumann, 1983: 135).
If, on the contrary, attitudes are viewed as more temporary tools, it is no longer given that central processing leads to stronger, more persistent attitudes. Hence, considering the importance assigned to non-conscious processes in this study, we tend to prefer the latter view. Consistent with the dual-process framework, Giner-Sorolla (1999) has proposed a further distinction between two components of attitudes: (1) immediate affect, i.e. feelings and emotions activated rapidly and effortlessly upon identification of the attitude object and (2) deliberative affect, i.e. feelings and emotions that are activated later on, in response to other objects associated with the attitude object (Giner-Sorolla, 1999: 444-
445).

Attitude Strength
On a theoretical level, defining attitude as the relation between objects and their evaluations implies that attitudes (relations) can vary in strength. Although attitude strength seems an important construct for theory and research, there is no apparent consensus about its conceptualization and assessment. Some have viewed attitude strength in terms of personal knowledge of the attitude-related issue, some in terms of personal importance, or simply in terms of attitude extremity and polarization (Pomerantz, Chaiken,
& Tordesillas, 1993: 408). However, neither of these indicants has been linked to the process by which attitudes guide behavior. In this study we therefore change the scope somewhat and focus on the accessibility of attitudes, that is, the speed and ease with which the attitude can be accessed from memory. We do this assuming that that attitude strength
per se is less interesting than whether the attitude will actually activate to guide behavior.
Reversing the concept in this way and focusing on activation instead of extremity, we view the strength of the object-evaluation association as a critical determinant of accessibility, which, in turn, acts as a central factor in the process by which attitudes guide behavior.
This assumption received initial support from an experiment conducted by Fazio, Powell, and Williams (1989) showing that individuals with accessible attitudes had immediate perceptions of a given object that were heavily influenced by their attitudes and, as a result, tended to behave consistently with those attitudes. In contrast, the immediate perceptions of people with less accessible attitudes appeared to have been less attitudinally congruent and tended to be governed by the momentarily salient dimensions. Further evidence regarding the functional value of accessible attitudes was provided by Blascovich
& al. (1993). Employing a psycho-physiological measure to assess effort expenditure during decision-making, they found that participants displayed less cardiovascular activity when deciding between alternatives toward which they already held accessible attitudes.
Automatic activation of their attitudes apparently obviated any need to construct evaluations of the alternatives ‘on the spot’ (Blascovich & al., 1993: 167).
Attitudes to behavior

Since the very beginning of attitude research, definitions have reflected the notion that behavior follows from attitudes 35 . For instance, Allport (1935) posited that attitudes determine for each individual what he will see and hear. That is, according to Allport, attitude-evoking objects are at an advantage in terms of their being consciously noticed.
Although this early theory is intuitively appealing, we need some modification to make it applicable to less conscious behavior. As noted above, this modification is presented by
Fazio’s MODE model, according to which attitudes guide decisions, and hence behavior in a less direct fashion, by affecting people’s appraisals of decision alternatives (Sanbonmatsu &
Fazio, 1990: 620). An attitude that is highly accessible from memory, and hence likely to be activated automatically upon the individual’s encountering an attitude object, is apt to result in immediate perceptions that are congruent with the attitude (Fazio & Towles-
Schwen, 1999: 109). Taking this line of thought to a more general level, attitude development seems to constitute an important means by which individuals can structure the multitude of objects, people, and issues they encounter daily. By forming attitudes, individuals structure their social world into classes of objects that merit either approach or avoidance behavior. The more accessible the attitudes are, the greater their impact on behavior will be (Fazio, 2001: 130).
Consistent with the dual-process thinking that guides this study, we assume that attitudes can lead to behavior by two different routes. The basic difference between the two is the extent to which deciding on a particular course of action involves conscious deliberation about or a spontaneous reaction to one’s perception of the immediate situation
(Fazio, 1990a: 78). The deliberative process involves individuals’ deciding how to behave in a given situation and subsequent behavior in accordance with that decision. Like other controlled processes, this involves considerable cognitive work (Fazio, 1990a: 78). For reasons already stated, the process by which spontaneous reactions lead to behavior is more interesting to this study. Of special interest is the fact that many consumption-related behaviors appear to be of this kind and that influence may occur even though the individual does not actively retrieve the attitude from memory and reflect upon it in any way (Fazio,
1990a: 79). Investigating this spontaneous attitude-behavior relationship, Fazio found that the recent activation, or priming, of a construct from memory is sufficient for that
35
It must be noted, however, that some theorists have taken the complete opposite approach and claimed that attitudes follow from rather than guide behavior (Holland & al., 2002). One influential example of this approach is Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance.

construct to influence interpretations in a latter situation (Fazio, 1990a: 79). Hence, the spontaneous attitude-behavior relationship is enormously functional for daily life, e.g. consumer behavior. Attitudes can serve as “ready aids” that eliminate the need to appraise an object anew upon each encounter, and thus facilitate decision-making (Fazio,
Blascovich, & Driscoll, 1993: 2). Given that an individual’s social behavior is largely a function of his/her perception of the immediate situation (typically somewhat ambiguous), the extent to which attitudes influence perception becomes an indirect determinant of the degree to which attitudes guide behavior (Fazio, 1986: 208; Fazio & Zanna, 1981: 165).
Object appraisal, which following the definition advocated above is a common feature of all attitudes, allows individuals to decide quickly and efficiently how to relate to situationally relevant attitude objects (Blascovich & al., 1993: 165). However, and herein lies the link to the accessibility-construct presented above, unless an attitude can be activated from memory it cannot produce selective perception of the object in the immediate situation
(Fazio, 1986: 212). This, in turn, makes the notion of “strength of associations between objects and their evaluation” (Fazio, 1989) crucially important.
Automatic Attitude Activation
Classical experiments is social psychology (see Wegner & Bargh, 1998, for a review) all seem to highlight a basic conflict between the automaticity of behavior and the desire to control it. Across several studies discussed by Wegner and Bargh, the real behavior is conceived to be the one that occurs spontaneously, not something developed for the experimenters’ amusement or misdirection. In an attempt to outline what constitutes automatic behavior in the context of attitude activation Fazio & al. (1986; see also Bargh & al., 1992; Chaiken &
Bargh, 1993) focused on the tendency of the stored evaluation of an attitude object to become active on the mere observation of that object (or its symbolic equivalent) in the environment. Automatic attitude activation can be seen as a mediating mechanism that plays a crucial role in many significant cognitive and social processes. As it has been argued above, the extent to which an individual’s attitude is capable of automatic activation determines both the power that the attitude exerts on the individual’s information processing, judgments, and behavior and the functional value of possessing the attitude
(Fazio, 2001: 129). For example, accessible attitudes alert people to the presence of objects that have the potential for hedonic consequences and promote hedonically meaningful categorizations of such objects. In a discussion crucially relevant to the study of

product placements, some researchers (e.g. Fazio, 1993: 753) have held that the key determinant of automatic activation is idiosyncratic differences in the strength of the association in memory between an object and its evaluation, whereas others (e.g. Bargh & al., 1992) have claimed the key determinant to be the mere existence of an evaluation stored in memory. Clearly the former explanation assigns greater significance to the technique of product placement, by postulating that attitudes change through exposure.
Claiming that priming simply evokes pre-existing attitudes leaves less influence to the actual media stimulus.
On the level of information processing, the notion of automaticity generally refers to either processing without awareness and effort or processing that captures attention even when an individual is engaged in other behavior (Isen & Diamond, 1989: 124). It is important to note that these two concepts of automatic processing are not mutually exclusive; automatic and attentive processes may occur together and produce different outcomes.
This, in turn, implies the possibility of viewing a TV show attentively while processing the embedded product placements automatically. In order for this to occur, however, placements must not be overly prominent or in other ways attract too much conscious attention.
Attitudes to Consumer Behavior
Essentially all persuasive mass media communication can be conceptualized as attempts to change people’s attitudes and behavior. Above, research findings in social psychology have been presented in support of a causal relationship between the two notions. For example, racism studies have found evaluations that were automatically activated (toward blacks) to be predictive of people’s observed behavior (toward black peers) (Fazio, 2001: 129). Here we narrow the scope to consumption-related behavior and argue that a similar causality can be found in this domain. Inspired by Batra and Ray, we assume that changes in purchase behavior is related most of all to changes in brand attitudes (1986a: 443). Before accepting this causality, however, some important issues must be taken into account; the generalizability of attitude functionality must be tempered by a number of considerations.
For example, the importance of a behavioral decision may moderate the effect advocated here. In terms of the effort-reducing potential assigned to accessible attitudes, mundane decisions may benefit more than decisions of a more profound nature (Blascovich & al.,
1993: 175). Having a very accessible positive attitude toward a particular brand of car (e.g.

BMW) does not necessarily facilitate this economically consequential purchase decision (e.g. because the car too expensive to be a realistic option). Furthermore, a given attitude object (e.g. beer or soft drink) may evoke more than one accessible attitude, and these attitudes may differ in polarity (e.g. like the taste and dislike the calories) thereby perhaps even increasing the effort of a decision (e.g. to drink or not to drink) (Blascovich & al.,
1993: 175). In spite of these moderations, however, it seems safe to assume that accessible attitudes can often function to facilitate coping with everyday situations. Especially when choosing among brands of regularly purchased products, attitudes (e.g. brand preferences) facilitate efficient shopping. Without highly accessible attitudes, however, such as when choosing among brands of less frequently purchased products, shopping requires more cognitive effort.
Attitudes to Behavior in a Product Placement Context
To examine the importance of attitudes as a mediator between exposure to product placements and subsequent behavior we here return to the conception of product placements in television programs as a substitute for direct experience. Of special importance to this discussion are two studies by Fazio and his colleagues (Fazio & Zanna,
1981; Fazio & al., 1982) indicating that attitudes formed through direct, behavioral experience with the attitude object are (1) more predicative of subsequent behavior and (2) more persistent over time than attitudes based on indirect experience. Especially the latter finding is crucial to the external validity of experimental research. In order to have any impact on consumer behavior, the effects of exposure to stimuli must hold for considerably longer than just the duration of the experiment (e.g. see Chaiken & Bargh, 1993: 761).
Attitudes that are formed through exposure to media content have to be accessible even several hours or days later, e.g. at the point of purchase. Fazio and his colleagues (cited in the addendum to Chaiken & Bargh, 1993: 765) tested delays between attitude formation and activation of up to three months and found exactly such durable effects. Baker tested durability of effects in a classical conditioning framework and found stable effects across two- and seven-day delays (Baker, 1999: 44).
In a study of particular relevance to product placement, Fazio and Zanna (1982) found that specific or single-act behaviors are best predicted by specific attitudes, whereas general attitudes, on the other hand, are more predictive of general behavior patterns across multiple acts. Although Fazio and Zanna’s finding pertains to social behavior in

general, it seems an apt description of the different challenges that face commercial product placements and public service announcements, respectively. That is, product placements aim at influencing specific attitudes (e.g. brand attitudes) in order to influence specific behavior (e.g. the purchase of a product). Public service messages typically target general issues (e.g. drugs) in order to change behavioral patterns (e.g. drug use) 36 . The view of attitudes, whether specific or general, as important antecedents of cognition (and thus behavior) is supported by MacKenzie and Lutz’s finding that brand attitude is strongly influenced by attitude toward the ad and hardly at all influenced by brand-related cognition, i.e. that peripheral processing is at work in the formation of brand attitude
(MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989: 62).
Interlude: Attitudes to Behavior, Strength of Association, and MODE
As argued in the previous sections, attitudes can be thought of as useful constructs that individuals rely on as the basis for a decision when situational constraints impair their motivation and opportunity to consider the details of the available information (Roskos-
Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1992: 198). Importantly, we assume this lack of motivation and opportunity to be attributable to both the viewing context, in which product placements are encountered, and to much of everyday consumer behavior. In the viewing experience, the generally low level of information provision increases the proportion of inferences to facts retrievable from memory (Berger, 1999: 557), constituting a lack of opportunity to process deliberatively. Later, at the point of purchase, many decisions are made without any significant motivation to process information. Under these circumstances, the MODE model highlights the notion of attitude activation (rather than attitude extremity) as a central component in the process by which attitudes guide behavior. According to the model (Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999), automatically activated attitudes guide behavior in a relatively spontaneous manner; that is, without the individual’s active consideration of the attitude and without the individual’s necessary awareness of its influence. Together, the importance assigned to accessibility and the definition of attitudes as associations in
36
See Wagner & Sundar (2003) for an extensive study of the role of attitudes in relation to PSAs.

memory between objects and their evaluation lead to the view of associative strength as a crucial determinant of behavior.
The theory and research presented thus far have a number of methodological implications for the experimental study of effects. First, the MODE model indicates that explicit (self-reported) measures should be restricted to the domain of high-motivation attitudes, whereas implicit (unobtrusive) measures are adequate for assessing attitudes regardless of subjects’ level of motivation. According to Fazio (1986: 217) the best way to measure associative strength (attitude-accessibility) is via response time to attitudinal or other queries. Presentation of an attitude-object has been shown to automatically activate from memory the evaluation that an individual associates with the object (Fazio, 2001:
115). In addition, a variety of field and laboratory research has revealed that attitudebehavior consistency is greater for accessible attitudes (see Fazio (2001) for a review). In other words, strength of association (SOA) can be seen as a moderator variable with regard to the direction of the relation between attitudes and behavior. In a seminal study, Fazio & al. (1986) found that if a subject had a strong negative (positive) association to an object, then presentation of that object as a prime facilitated the subject’s indication that an evaluative adjective was negative (positive). Whereas the insights cited above are all conceptual in nature, this finding seems more immediately relevant to the design of experimental research. That is, in order to assess whether a given stimulus has affected an individual’s associative strength, researchers may use as primes relevant attitude-objects and subsequently measure response latencies in an evaluation task. This important methodological implication is discussed in much more detail below.

4. The Viewing Experience: Identification and Transportation
As noted in the introduction to product placement, there seems to be a general consensus among theorists within different fields that media images have the power to guide and cultivate individuals’ perceptions and attitudes (e.g., see O’Guinn & Shrum (1997) or
Schrøder & al. (2003) for reviews). The purpose of this section is to investigate to more detail the aspects of television programming and television consumption that constitute the medium’s “guiding function” (Green, Garst, and Brock, 2004: 162). Below, we propose a way of understanding viewers’ reconstruction of televised narratives by addressing the procedures by which viewers cognitively and emotionally identify with the agents of fiction, using mental models and schemata from social psychology. In doing this, we work from the assumption that the bond audiences form with programs and characters, and the opportunity offered by product placements to represent desirable identity characteristics through the brand/character pairing (Karrh, 1998: 31), is an interesting vantage point in the study of product placements. In the following we explore these aspects and potentials of the technique, drawing further inspiration from the view of product placements as a blurring of the line between fiction and reality and the line between entertainment and persuasion.
Fiction versus Reality – Entertainment versus Persuasion
By addressing the concept of identification - the perceived relationship between viewers and characters on screen - we here try to explore the boundary and potential interactions between fiction and reality. Specifically, in the context of persuasion studies, the notion of identification leads to the question of how viewers reconcile the competing normative and experiential claims of fictional information in their beliefs about and actions in reality. In asking this question, and linking identification with fictional characters to real-world behavior, the present study differs from the majority of earlier research in at least two ways. First, although the power of fictional narratives to influence people has never been questioned (as an example, one may think of censorship), most persuasion studies have addressed non-fictional advocacy messages rather than fictional genres. Second, previous research has mostly focused on one of two issues: either on potential applications of
“everyday psychology” on the fiction experience (e.g. Prentice & Gerrig, 1999) or the realworld consequences of exposure to fiction (Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004). Instead of just examining how viewers use their skills of interpersonal interaction when dealing with

fictional characters, we try to examine the “full circle” from application of real-life processes on fiction and back again; that is, how the fiction experience influences real-life behavior. Before we go as far, however, the distinction between fiction and reality, and the way it conditions viewers’ responses, needs to be addressed in more detail.
Our cultural default may be to assume that nonfiction, with its pretension of veridicality, and fiction, with its patina of verisimilitude but no necessary pretension to accuracy, should be understood as distinct realms, with information gained from fiction treated as at least potentially less reliable. Most television content is clearly distinguished as either fiction, such as sit-com and soap opera, or nonfiction, such as news report and documentary, although the lines are becoming increasingly blurred (Green, Garst, & Brock,
2004: 164). Although our object of study is television, our interest in dual-process theory makes us turn to Prentice and Gerrig (1999), who have discussed the issue of reality and fiction in relation to literature. According to Prentice and Gerrig’s review of the usefulness of dual-process theories beyond the realm of real-world social interaction, two opposing views can be adopted. One, inspired by Cooleridge, holds that application of fictional insight requires a “willing suspension of disbelief” (Prentice & Gerrig, 1999: 529). Other theorists, however, call into question the idea that information is ever greeted with default disbelief (Prentice & Gerrig, 1999: 530). Arguing that unobtrusive persuasive stimuli in television are considerably different from literature, we tend to advocate the latter view.
In a work related to that of Prentice and Gerrig, Gilbert (1991) summarizes laboratory evidence showing that when subjects are presented with communication, the initial (more primitive) response is to believe in it. Apparently, if we do have a cognitive default value, it is to believe.
In a similar vein, but contrary to what has traditionally been the general assumption, recent studies suggest that fiction is not inherently less persuasive than nonfiction. More specifically, research on viewers’ and readers’ reception has shown that narratives labeled as news (nonfiction) or as fiction had equivalent influence on perceptions of a social problem, and that both specific and general beliefs were affected by exposure to a narrative, regardless of whether the narrative was labeled as fiction or nonfiction (Green,
Garst, & Brock, 2004: 164). In fact, research has shown that in some cases fiction may even be more persuasive than non-fiction. Testing his own hypothesis - that individuals do not automatically create a separate mental category for fictional information, as compared with factual communication (Gerrig, 1993) - Gerrig and his associates (Prentice, Gerrig, &

Bailis, 1997) found that people accepted false assertions, such as “chocolate helps you lose weight” and “mental illness is contagious” if those assertions were embedded in fictional narratives. The finding that people are apparently susceptible to assertions embedded in a fictional narrative may easily be extended, for example, to product endorsements contained within entertainment programs.
Changing the focus from media products to receivers we claim that there is nothing unique about the mental processing of fictional narratives and characters. Rather these are processed in much the same way as situations and people encountered in real life (e.g. see
Grodal, 1997: 85). It must be clearly noted that this is not the same as claiming that viewers cannot tell fiction from reality. Rather perception of single elements takes place and lead to effects on a local level, whereas assessment of reality status is carried out on a global level. That is, although aware of the overall fictional status of a given media product, viewers still “perform hypothetical ‘as if’ simulations of situations” (Grodal, 1997:
94). Further, Grodal states:
“When we agree to watch visual fiction, we accept a set of rules of experience and establish a viewer personae, a mental model of the viewer as spectator of fiction, and this viewer model, this personae, feels suspense, happiness, fear, and sadness as if witnessing similar phenomena in the non-fictive world” (Grodal, 1997: 103)
Or, as stated in an early work by Horton and Wohl:
“At the end of the day, what is soap operas other than a never-ending examination of the eventualities one can meet in real life?” (1956: 33)
To address the persuasive potential of commercial messages embedded in other types of communication, we here return to the theories of learning through observing the behavior of others that were presented above. For instance, McInnis and Jaworski have introduced the concept of “empathy-based persuasion” to account for the process that occurs when consumers’ attitudes are affected by vicariously experiencing the emotions the source exhibits in reaction to brand use (MacInnis & Jaworski, 1989: 13). Whereas marketing practitioners have apparently seized on the selling potential inherent in entertainment media, psychologists and media scholars are only beginning to understand the nature and mechanisms of fictional influence. However, early evidence suggests that two mechanisms, low elaborative scrutiny and high experienced “transportation” 37 , may underlie the influence of fictional communication (Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004: 161).
37
The concept of transportation is introduced below

By focusing on the fiction-reality dichotomy, we take an approach comparable to the one often applied in traditional advertising research with the distinction between dramatic and argumentative forms (e.g. see Deighton, Romer, & McQueen, 1989). That is, we hypothesize dramatic forms - be it dramas in a classical sense or more pathetic genres - have the potential to spark audience involvement and identification, whereas argumentative genres are processed in a more rational manner. In terms of persuasiveness, effective fiction is hypothesized to influence beliefs by a path that evokes more expression of feeling and verisimilitude, less counterargument, and less direct elicitation of beliefs than occurs with effective factual argument (Deighton, Romer, & McQueen, 1989: 335).
Andriasova and Wagner (2004) have applied this theory in a study of product placements and shown promising results. However, Andriasova and Wagner worked with the two distinct variables of “desire to emulate the characters” and “program involvement” and found both to correlate significantly with persuasiveness. This leads us to suggest the concept of identification as a unifying construct explaining the persuasive effect.
Identification
The following discussion is based on an inclusive reading of literature addressing identification and related phenomena. That is, in the literature reviewed for this section, the process in question is referred to as “identification”, “transportation”, “empathy”, and
“para-social interaction”. Although the different theories differ in their implications, we consider the common traits to be more prevalent than the differences. For the sake of conceptual consistency, we shall therefore use the unifying notion of identification in the experimental part of the study.
On a general level, theories of identification (e.g. see Jo & Berkowitz, 1994;
Livingstone, 1998), transportation (Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004) and para-social interaction
(Horton & Wohl, 1956) all deal with the ways in which an illusion of personal relationship between viewers and media personae can be created. Of special interest to the social psychological approach advocated here is the conception of audience involvement in dramatic programs as consisting of many of the same roles as occur in normal social interaction, e.g., in primary groups (Horton & Wohl, 1956: 30). The conceptual framework that humans regard as their ‘real-world knowledge’ largely consists of information mediated through stories featuring people they have never met, or who do not exist, and broadcasted events they did not witness or that never happened. Whether such stories are fictional or

not, people learn about the outside world from them and frequently build up affective relationships with the characters, sometimes undertaking action to seek or avoid interaction. In extreme cases people write love letters to a soap opera character or hang garlic from the ceiling to ward off vampires. Hence, fictional characters seem to satisfy basic functions; they are used as sources of information about the real world and serious life events (e.g., Busselle, 2001; Prentice & Gerrig, 1999, pp. 529-530).
Adapted to the focus of the present study, identification is here viewed as a motivational state that affects the extent and focus of consumers’ attention and comprehension processes, and thus the specific meanings that are produced (Celsi & Olson, 2001: 210).
Compared to some earlier theories of identification, which have presumed a primary identification with the (movie) image as such as antecedent of the secondary character identification (e.g. see Frandsen & Bruun, 2004: 6), we consider identification to be a general psychological process that doesn’t need mediation.
A crucial issue when examining the effect of identification on product placement effectiveness is the intimate tie that often exists between the product and characters in the story or the story line. Hence, contrary to what has been found to be the case in traditional advertising, where higher involvement in the surrounding story reduces the involvement with the commercials (McCarty, 2004: 58), one might assume that high involvement in the story would increase the effect of product placements that are intimately tied to the plot.
We argue that when individuals watch a movie or a television program, their primary focus is on comprehending the story and that an adequate understanding of product placement requires an understanding of how people comprehend the programming (Yang, Roskos-
Ewoldsen, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2004: 80).
As early as 1916, Münsterberg stated how spectators ‘share’ the emotions of the characters on screen and simulate these so that “all the resulting sensations from muscles, joints, tendons, from skin and viscera, from blood circulation and breathing, give the color of living experience to the emotional reflection in our mind” (cited in Grodal, 1997: 82).
Along the same line of reasoning, Balázs (1970) posited that “[characters] need not tell us what they feel, for we see what they see and see it as they see it (…) Herein lies the psychological act of ‘identification’” (cited in Grodal, 1997: 83). Several authors have suggested that viewers’ identification with characters influence the extent to which they are affected by the witnessed occurrences. For instance, in her study of soaps Livingstone
(1998) found that it was not sociological or demographic factors that influenced viewers’

interpretation, but psychological factors. The most important factor was identification.
Whether the viewers identified with (or saw themselves similar to) any of the characters was shown to be important in how viewers interpreted the narrative (Livingstone, 1998: 56).
The viewers who identify with the actors they watch might vividly imagine themselves as these characters and think of themselves as carrying out the depicted actions. As a consequence, the ideas and action tendencies associated with the depicted behavior should be activated relatively strongly (Jo & Berkowitz, 1994: 46). It is important, however, to note that identification does not exclude a certain distance. Such distance seems to keep the observer from becoming totally involved with a fictional character, which could be too scary or too desirable to be pleasurable. Instead, we advocate a view of the fiction experience as the performance of hypothetical ‘as if’ simulations of situations. Hence, participation in fiction may function as a form of role-playing. To the extent that viewers
identify closely with one or more of the characters and experience the events of the story as they unfold, they are likely to come away feeling that those people and events could have been real (Prentice & Gerrig, 1999: 531). Recently, Reesink has conceptualized this fiction-reality continuum of reception in terms of viewer discourse. In a study of the reality show Big Brother, Reesink distinguishes between the “psychological discourse” applied by academic observers to explain the phenomenon and the “soap discourse”, in which ‘normal’ viewers accept the characters’ interactions as if they were between real people (Reesink,
2001: 11). Interestingly, the two types of discourse are far from mutually exclusive; theoretical insight in underlying mechanisms does not prevent viewers from ‘getting lost’ in characters’ interactions.
By stating this, we do not mean to imply that all viewers are equally likely to identify with the characters of any given program. From our own television consumption, we know that some mechanisms of selection are at work to determine which programs we get immersed in and which programs leave us unaffected. Most importantly perhaps, the salience and activation-power of fictions may be enhanced if the ‘texture’ of protagonists has a close match to that of the particular viewer. We draw this idea from early studies showing that a communicatee’s perception of his/her similarity to a communicator is an important determinant of the communicator’s effectiveness (Berscheid, 1966: 670).
Although Berscheid examines real-world interactions, we assume the finding to be relevant in a mediated context as well. That is, similar to real life, where physical attractiveness is decisive in the initial stages of choosing friends, because the availability of other

information is limited, the characters we ‘meet’ in fiction are usually quite unfamiliar to us and the time in which we become acquainted with them is no longer than the length of exposure to the (art)work. Therefore, during the first few moments, physical attractiveness is used to assess the inner qualities of the fictional character.
In another relevant early study, Festinger (1954) found that people, who are similar to oneself, especially with regard to an opinion but also on other criteria, are more likely seen as the proper referents for that particular opinion. If a discrepancy in opinion exists between people who perceive each other to be the proper referents for an opinion,
Festinger predicted and found a tendency to change one’s opinion to move it closer to the opinion of the referent. Wagner and Sundar (2003) have applied this theory in a study of celebrity spokespersons in anti-drug PSAs with promising results. In the context of product placement, one may imagine Festinger’s theory to work along the unconscious lines of
“Rachel (Friends) likes Carlsberg Beer. I like Rachel. Therefore I ‘have to’ like Carlsberg
Beer”.
Para-social Interaction
To elaborate the idea of the almost-personal relationship between viewers and on-screen character, we now turn to the concept of para-social interaction, as it was introduced by
Horton & Wohl as early as 1956. In outlining their theory, the authors drew inspiration from the advent and increasing influence of new mass media, notably television. As stated by
Horton and Wohl:
“One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media – radio, television, and the movies – is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. The conditions of response to the performer are analogous to those in a primary group. The most remote and illustrious men are met
as if they were in the circle of one’s peers. (…) We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship. ” (Horton & Wohl, 1956: 27)
As the citation indicates, Horton and Wohl combine social psychology and media theory and as such their theory is a welcome input in the present discussion. Specifically, Horton and
Wohl describe people’s relation to media characters along the same dimensions as one would use to describe aspects of interpersonal interaction; the only difference being the absence of reciprocity (Frandsen & Bruun, 2004: 12). Interestingly, para-social interaction occurs when the relationship between viewers and characters is of a lasting nature, and

when the characters’ actions are relatively predictable (which intuitively seems to be the case in serialized television narratives). To viewers, characters in television fiction (e.g. soaps) and the actors that play these characters are often one and the same (Frandsen &
Bruun, 2004: 9).
Essential to the theory is that viewers have to believe what they are seeing as credible and natural in order to become a part of the para-social interaction. When this belief is present, the audience is assumed to become involved in the action and social relations of the program. Thus, the audience changes status back and forth between observer and participant (Horton & Wohl, 1956: 27). Rather than immersing herself in the production, the viewer answers the characters back, feels sorry for them when in difficulty, hates them when they are belligerent and to all intents and purposes responds and replies to them as though they were people she knows intimately. Herein lies the para-social interaction.
Although the theory explicitly addresses the processing of non-fictional stimuli and was introduced at a time where product placement was still in its infancy, Horton and Wohl did address the technique’s commercial potential:
The audience is supposed to play the role of the lover when facing the personae’s lover […] The audience is expected to benefit from the [personae’s] wisdom, contemplate his advice, sympathize with him through hardship, forgive his wrongdoings, buy the products he recommends, and keep his
sponsors informed of the respect he enjoys” (Horton & Wohl, 1956: 30 – emphasis added)
Clearly, Horton and Wohl are here touching upon a crucial dimension of product placement in televised fiction. Unlike traditional advertising, product placements are embedded in a context that is often highly involving. As indicated by Horton and Wohl (1956) the extent to which this character-involvement is transformed into product-related attitudes is an important antecedent of persuasive potential. Serialized television narratives, due to the sustained relationship that is established between viewers and characters, may be especially prone to spark such transfer (Avery & Ferraro, 2000: 219). Still drawing on Horton and Wohl (1956) we assume the role played by fictional characters can serve as an idealized version of everyday performance – a para-social approximation to events that perhaps never occur in real life. Addressing this issue, Horton and Wohl describe the contribution of the personae as that of “holding up a magic mirror to his followers, by virtue of playing his mutual role better and more ideally than partners in real life ever do” (1956: 32).

Our main argument for viewing identification and para-social interaction as closely related is the fact that both concepts deal with the ways in which an illusion of personal relationship between viewers and media personae can be created. Of special interest to the social psychological approach advocated here is the conception of audience involvement in dramatic programs as consisting of many of the same roles as occur in normal social interaction.
Transportation
Before discussing how theories of the viewer-character relationship can be applied in actual effects research, we introduce one last concept, “transportation”. The notion of transportation was proposed by Gerrig (1993) and further developed by Green and Brock
(2000) as a mechanism whereby fiction can effect beliefs. Transportation is defined as absorption into a story (Green & Brock, 2000: 701) and entails imagery, affect, and attentional focus. Although transportation was introduced in studies of literary fiction
(Green & Brock, 2000; Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004) it seems equally relevant to television.
Instead of being aware of their physical surroundings, transported viewers see the action of the narrative unfold before them. They react emotionally to events that are simply the staged interaction of actors (Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004: 168). To the extent that individuals are absorbed into a story or transported into a narrative world, they may show effects of the story on their real-world beliefs (Green & Brock, 2000: 701). Through this process parts of the world of origin may become inaccessible. In other words, the viewer is assumed to lose access to some of the real-world facts, including the ones that contradict the assertions made in the narrative, in favor of accepting the narrative world that the author (screen writer) has created.
Beyond the loss of access to real-world facts, transported viewers may experience strong emotions and motivations, even when they know the events in the story are not real
(e.g. see Gerrig, 1999: 179-191). For example, in a series of studies carried out by Green and Brock (2000), transported individuals – as measured on a paper-and-pencil
Transportation Scale (p. 704) - showed more story-consistent beliefs on both story-specific and general attitudinal measures than did individuals who were less transported. Green and
Brock’s demonstration of the power of fictional narratives highlights an interesting difference between rhetorical communication and narratives. Whereas rhetoric is much influenced by framing – e.g., the impact of arguments is affected by source credibility or

perception of speaker’s intent - Green and Brock’s findings suggest that once a viewer is
“rolling along” with a compelling narrative, the source has diminishing influence. In this fashion, the belief positions implied by a narrative might be adopted regardless of whether they correspond with reality. Thus, fictional narratives might be used to advantage by lowcredible sources or by speakers who lack cogent arguments.
Because transportation is hypothesized to be related to belief or attitude change, it is helpful to distinguish between transportation and cognitive elaboration. Whereas dualprocess theory addresses amount of thought per se, transportation theory posits processing that is qualitatively different from the traditional systematic or heuristic modes.
Elaboration implies critical attention to major points of an argument, whereas transportation is an immersion into a text. Elaboration leads to attitude change via logical consideration and evaluation of arguments, whereas transportation may lead to persuasion through other mechanisms. First, transportation may make narrative experience seem more like real experience. Second, transportation may reduce negative cognitive responding.
Finally, transportation is likely to create strong feelings toward the characters; the experiences or beliefs of those characters may then have an enhanced effect on viewers’ beliefs (Green & Brock, 2000: 702). This attachment to characters may play a critical role in narrative based attitude change. Source credibility is usually an external “given” in persuasive communications; however, for narrative communications, attachment to a protagonist may be an important determinant of the persuasiveness of a story. If a viewer likes or identifies with a particular character, statements made by that character, or implications of events experienced by that character, may carry special weight. This attachment may extend to objects or consumer products used by (or praised by) characters; on a more or less conscious level, viewers may form more positive attitudes through this association (Green, Garst, & Brock, 2004: 170)
The differences from dual-process theory, or rather the questioning of its ability to capture the phenomenological experience of viewing fiction, does not make the notion of transportation incompatible with the general dual-process framework. For instance, one may still draw upon the MODE model and suggest that transportation into a story causes people to be less motivated (or less able) to disbelieve any particular conclusion; transported individuals are so absorbed in the story that they would likely be reluctant to stop and critically analyze propositions presented therein.

Summary: Implications for Product Placement Research
Taken together, the theories about the television viewing experience that have been presented in this section have important implications for the experimental study of product placement effectiveness. Most importantly, the literature review leads us to assume that products placed in programs and related to characters that generate high levels of identification among viewers will elicit significantly more positive responses than products placed in programs that generate less viewer identification. In our attitude-to-behavior framework, what we expect is that product placements encountered under conditions of high identification will strengthen viewers’ positive associations, make these associations more accessible, and thus facilitate attitude-congruent behavior. In terms of study design, this leaves us with two challenges. First, we need to successfully manipulate stimulus materials (television programs) in order to generate differing levels of viewer identification.
Second, we need to develop and apply a reliable measure of non-verbalizable effects. The following sections deal with to these two issues in reverse order.

5. Strength of Association: Definition and Measurement
In previous sections it has been argued that effect studies in product placement need to adopt a different paradigm to better acknowledge the unobtrusive nature of the technique.
Instead of relying on self-reported measures of recall, attitude, and purchase intention, we’ve suggested that researchers focus on the less conscious way in which product placements are processed and on the less verbalizable effects that thus occur. Above, the notion of attitudes and especially the ease with which these attitudes are activated from memory has been introduced as a potential mediating variable between exposure to mass media stimuli and resulting behavior. In the present section we aim to further operationalize this construct in order to make it directly applicable in experimental research. In doing this, we question a number of the established dogma of qualitative media studies in a way that may seem controversial. It must be stressed that we do not do this in order to arouse controversy for controversy’s own sake, but rather to acknowledge what we consider to be the specific analytical challenges related to advertising in general and unobtrusive advertising in particular.
Strength of Association (SOA)
The concept of Strength of Association (SOA; Fazio, 1990b) is an extension of the ideas presented above on (1) motivation and opportunity as determinants of processing, (2) the attitude-behavior relationship, and (3) the automatic activation of attitudes. Following from the definition of attitudes as paired associations in memory of objects and objectevaluations, SOA can be seen as a determinant of the accessibility of attitudes from memory and, hence, the likelihood that the associated evaluation will be activated automatically upon the individual’s exposure to an attitude object (Fazio, 2001: 125).
Whereas traditional attitude measures rely on people’s ability to express their own reactions, e.g. by using semantic differential scales, having participants rate objects on an attitude-barometer or otherwise, SOA measures may allow us to assess persuasive effects of which viewers themselves are not aware (Dovidio & Fazio, 1991: 206). That is, SOA determines the likelihood that attitudes will guide behavior and can therefore be seen as a measure of the power and function of an attitude. The greater the accessibility, the more likely an attitude can be activated automatically, without the conscious attention of the

individual (Blascovich & al., 1993: 165). Hence, compared to traditional comprehensionrecall theories, SOA is found at a deeper level of subjective processing.
Also very relevant to the present study, SOA is hypothesized to change through
“associative learning” (Fazio, 2001: 127). That is, associative strength is affected by the simple and direct pairing in memory of an object and a descriptor – a process similar to
“peripheral processing” in the Elaboration-Likelihood Model or “spontaneous processing” in the MODE. This connection to dual-process theory is illustrated by Wagner and Sundar’s research on anti-drug ad viewing styles (Wagner & Sundar, 2003). Manipulating participants’ motivation to process - by having the experimenter exaggerate and downplay, respectively, the importance of the study - Wagner and Sundar found the most effective changes in SOA to be achieved through peripheral processing. Furthermore, recent research conducted by
Andriasova and Wagner has shown that while product placement consumption may not lead to a change in viewers’ self-reported attitudes toward placed products, watching them can influence consumers’ product-related strength of association (Andriasova & Wagner,
2004) 38 . As the citations indicate, research on SOA as a result of media consumption is still a relatively novel phenomenon. However, the first results seem very promising and should attract scholarly attention in the future.
Unobtrusive Measures of SOA
As noted throughout this study, effect research in unobtrusive advertising should strive to develop an indirect measure that circumvents response biases and other problems associated with direct reports; that is, an assessment of attitudes in which subjects either are not aware that their attitudes are being measured, and therefore cannot adapt their responses to what they find socially or situationally desirable (Dovidio & Fazio, 1991: 210), or in which answers are given at a pace too high to allow conscious control. Though some work has been done toward this end, the development of implicit measures relevant to social psychology in general and media effects studies in particular is still in its infancy. The literature, in spite of a recent surge of interest in the use of implicit measurement techniques 39 , has not matured to the point at which many firm conclusions can be drawn
38
39
The methodological aspects of Wagner and his colleagues’ work are discussed shortly
Recently four special issues of influential journals have been devoted to the issue: Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology on “Unconscious Processes in Stereotyping and Prejudice (1997), Cognition & Emotion on
“Automatic Affective Processing” (2001), Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie on “Attitude Measurement

(Fazio & Olson, 2003: 320). However, a number of studies have compared the predictive abilities of SOA measures to self-report and found the former to be superior (Dovidio &
Fazio, 1991; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999; Wagner & Sundar, 2003). In the past research that has come to our attention, two different (albeit conceptually related) methodological constructions have been proposed for assessing the evaluative associations that underlie deep-level attitudes. The two - evaluative semantic priming and the Implicit Association
Test (IAT) - share a common focus on attitudes that are manifest as actions or judgments under the control of automatically activated evaluations, without the performer’s awareness of that causation (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998: 1464).
Before we turn to the more detailed discussion of specific unobtrusive measures, it must be noted that our preference for these is highly context specific. That is, we prefer unobtrusive measures because we examine a construct assumed not be measurable via selfreport. This does not imply that we generally advocate Schein-Wesen thinking and consider non-verbalizable attitudes more ‘real’ than explicit ones. Moreover, it should be noted that implicit measures do not necessarily assess implicit (unconscious) attitudes. Participants may be unaware that their attitudes are being assessed, but that does not mean they are unaware that they posses these attitudes (Fazio & Olson, 2003: 315). This consideration obtains crucial significance in the empirical part of this study (reported below), where the strength of research participants’ associations toward different computer brands is measured using unobtrusive methods.
Evaluative Semantic Priming
In the method referred to as evaluative semantic priming, differences in SOA are operationalized in terms of how quickly subjects can evaluate an attitude object (Fazio & al., 1986; Chaiken & Bargh, 1993: 759). Experimental subjects are primed with an attitude object and subsequently given a semantic evaluation task. Typically, in this evaluation task subjects are asked to categorize adjectives (positive/negative) as quickly and accurately as possible. The pattern of facilitation that is exhibited on positive versus negative adjectives – usually the time needed to correctly categorize the presented words - is seen as an indication of the individual’s (latent) attitude toward the primed object (Fazio & al., 1995:
1013). That is, if exposure to a given prime (e.g. puppies) results in faster categorization of using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) (2001), and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on “Implicit
Prejudice and Stereotyping” (2001).

positively than negatively valenced adjectives (e.g. “cute” vs. “evil”), the subject is considered to posses a positive attitude toward the prime. As the example indicates, priming measures focus on what is automatically activated by the primed stimulus; the process is potentiated by the automatic activation of an evaluation associated with the prime, and any consequent effect on the latency of response to positive versus negative targets provides information about the evaluation of the prime (Fazio & Olson, 2003: 310).
Priming is explained in the theoretical framework of category activation according to which concepts (such as words and persons) are represented in memory by nodes in a network of associations. Priming can activate a concept node, thereby increasing the probability of its use in subsequent tasks (Pratkanis & Greenwald, 1988: 343).
Some studies have indicated that priming measures may be sensitive enough to serve as measures of individual differences in the strength of automatic attitudinal evaluation
(e.g. Bargh & al., 1992; Fazio, 1993; Fazio & al. 1986; Hermans, de Houwer, & Eelen, 1994;
Sanbonmatsu & Fazio, 1986; Sanbonmatsu, Osborne, & Fazio, 1986), whereas other studies have indicated that the measure is relatively unaffected by variations in attitude strength
(notably Bargh & al., 1992). Regardless of this inconsistency, however, priming studies have shown good predictive ability in terms of subsequent behavior (see Fazio & Olson, 2003:
317), especially, and consistent with the MODE model, among individuals whose motivation to control responses was relatively low.
Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Compared to evaluative semantic priming and its appealing simplicity, the Implicit
Association Test (IAT) is less parsimonious. However, by complicating the procedure somewhat, the IAT seems better able to resist participants’ ‘masking’ by self-presentation strategies (such as the reluctance to admit being influenced by persuasive communication).
The IAT assesses the association between a target-concept discrimination and an attitude dimension (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998: 1465). The method focuses on the ease with which participants can associate a response intended to signal a positive (or negative) reaction to the stimulus with a second response regarding some attribute dimension other than evaluation. The critical portion of the IAT involves a combined categorization task for which a response key has two meanings (Fazio, 2001: 135). For example subjects may be asked to simultaneously perform the evaluative task of categorizing adjectives (e.g.
“good”, “beautiful”, “gloomy” etc.) as positive/negative and the non-evaluative task of

sorting nouns (e.g. “sparrow”, “parrot”, “revolver”, “riffle” etc.) into two main categories
(“birds” and “weapons”). Noun-adjective evaluative congruence (e.g. flower-beautiful; weapon-nasty) facilitates responding to the target, producing variations in response latencies that can be used to measure automatic evaluation of the prime category
(Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998: 1464). Of course, sorting birds and flowers is not directly relevant to a study of product placements. Nor is the facilitation achieved by pairing congruent nouns and adjectives revolutionary. However, and herein lies the appeal to this study, the method seems to lend itself readily to studies of a more commercial nature. That is, by substituting the nouns mentioned above with the main attributes of a given product (i.e. the product placed in a previously shown program) or other product identifiers, researchers are able to measure consumers’ attitudinal responses to placements. Andriasova & Wagner (2004) did just this using as stimulus the placement of
Snuggle ® laundry detergent in an episode of the sit-com Friends. After viewing an excerpt from the episode, participants were administered a pencil-and-paper IAT in which “soft”
(assumed to be a key product-attribute) and “hard” served as judgment items. As noted above, Andriasova and Wagner (2004) found a significant facilitation effect when “soft” or synonyms for this word (“fluffy”, “gentle”, “comfy” etc.) were paired with positive adjectives, indicating that the placement had positively affected participants’ productrelated SOA. Interestingly, this facilitation effect was not found in a no-exposure control group. These findings, adding to two earlier studies (Wagner, 2004; Wagner & Sundar, 2003) showing significant differences between IAT-scores and self-reported attitude-measures, strongly indicate that unobtrusive assessment of SOA can yield interesting results to the study of product placements. Moreover, studies in other areas of social psychology have found the IAT to be more sensitive to evaluative differences than evaluative semantic priming (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998: 1478) and various studies have demonstrated that IAT can be a better indicator of behavior than explicit attitude statements (e.g. Fazio & Olson, 2003: 303). Taken together, these indications of the IAT’s applicability in research areas conceptually similar to ours, lead us to prefer this method. In the next section, we describe to more detail how the measure is adopted to fit the present purpose.

Interlude: Discussion of Experimental Research
Before we get as far, however, some basic methodological issues need to be clarified and some potential critiques must be addressed. Most importantly, the epistemological basis for experimental effects research has been the subject of some debate. Whereas experimentation has been an indispensable part of the natural sciences as far anyone can remember; its use in media studies is still a relatively novel phenomenon (Zikmund, 1997:
271). Needless to say, however, the novelty is not the sole reason why the concept has sparked controversy. Rather, the basic idea of isolating processes meant to occur in the real world and studying them out of context is far from the epistemology advocated by most qualitative researchers. In our context, the question can be raised whether artificial laboratory settings and an indirect measure said to represent associative strength actually capture the real-life processes we aim to investigate. In all likelihood, scholars adhering to qualitative fieldwork would say that they do not, because the very setting violates external
validity. Hence, the question is highly relevant when presenting a study inspired by the
American tradition of social psychology to a continental European audience 40 . As a result, our answer may seem controversial, even conceptually incompatible with the dominant qualitative view. In our opinion, however, this potential controversy is brought about more than anything by differing views of external validity. That is, whereas qualitative researchers tend to view external validity in terms of naturalistic research context, we have no illusion of recreating such context. Instead, we aim at establishing a non-naturalistic context that recreates mental processes, as they would occur in real life. The key to achieving this is our unobtrusive experimental design. Instead of assessing people’s verbalizable responses, we use the Implicit Association Test to blur the actual purpose of study. By doing this we hope to avoid generating an unrealistically high degree of involvement with stimuli that are meant to be processed in a spontaneous fashion.
Another potential critique concerns the generalizability of experimental findings.
This issue is addressed in the “Participants” and “Stimulus Materials” sections below. Here suffice it to note that we consider generalizability to lie in the two-step operation of selecting appropriate stimuli and assessing their effects on participants. That is, we do not claim to that our exact findings apply to everybody everywhere. However, we do claim that
40 According to Rasmussen (1998) Danish media scholars are generally among the most faithful to the
Humanities and to qualitative methodology

successful confirmation of our experimental hypotheses would indicate a promising potential of the identification theory.

6. Experiment: Changing SOA with Product Placements
The experiment reported here continues the ongoing ‘research conversation’ where
Andriasova and Wagner (2004) left off. As presented above, Andriasova and Wagner’s research showed that product placements have the power to influence viewers’ productrelated SOA in a way unparalleled by influence on self-reported attitude measures. This experiment seeks to replicate Andriasova and Wagner’s general results and goes a step further in an attempt to investigate factors that may underlie their findings. In doing so, we try to operationalize the theories presented in previous sections about viewers’ identification with television shows as a possible antecedent of the effects of product placements on valenced persuasion measures. In accordance with the methodological standpoints that have been advocated throughout this thesis, the experiment applies an unobtrusive measure of the effect of product placements on viewers’ brand attitudes based on the evaluations that are automatically activated on the presentation of brand identifiers.
Hence, as all experimental research, this experiment aims to test the explanatory power of
hypotheses developed based on both general theory and previous research. To sum up the ideas developed thus far, we here present four hypotheses upon which the experimental study rests. The first two express the attempt to replicate Andriasova and Wagner’s (2004) key findings:
H1: Participants who view a product placement will exhibit significantly more positive product-related SOA than those who do not view a placement.
H2: Participants who view a product placement will not exhibit significantly more positive self-reported product-attitudes than those who do not view a placement.
In hypotheses three and four we address the concept of identification and the methodological dimension:
H3: Viewers’ level of identification with the television program in which the product placement occurs will predict their product-related SOA.
H4: Viewers’ level of identification with the television program in which the product placement occurs will not predict their self-reported attitudes toward the placed product.

Method
In a three-conditions between-participants experiment, all participants’ (N = 48) productrelated SOAs toward a placed product were measured with pencil-and-paper scales. Prior to measurement, participants were randomly assigned to either one of the two experimental conditions (identification condition or no-identification condition) or the control condition.
The goal of assigning participants randomly to conditions was to eliminate, or at least control, potential distorting variations that result from chance; that is, to assure that groups were identical with respect to all variables except the experimental treatment.
Participants assigned to one of the experimental conditions first viewed one of two sevenminute TV program excerpts that contained product placements, while control participants
(zero-exposure) simply completed the measures. Across the three groups, all participants completed the same measures in the same order, and all groups were told that they were participating in a general study examining the effects of media. The posttest control group design can be diagrammed as follows:
Experimental groups: R
Control Group: R
X
1, 2
O
1, 2
O
3
With R signifying random assignment, X the experimental treatment, and O the observations.
Participants
48 undergraduate students from two advertising classes at a major American university participated in the study as a course requirement introducing them to social science research methods 41 . Given that we aimed to test the influence of character identification on product placement effectiveness and given that a pretest was conducted to assess which television shows generated high and low degrees of identification in a sample population demographically similar to the research participant population, a student sample was considered perfectly appropriate. Hence, it is important to stress that we do not work with a random representative sample. As noted above, the generalizability we sought to achieve
41 As pointed out below, participants were not made aware of this educational purpose until after completion of the experiment

was at the level of character-viewer identification; that is, we did not aim to generalize from student sample to general population. On the contrary, such generalization is conceptually incompatible with the idea of target audiences and their unusually high level of identification with characters in their favorite shows. Herein lies one of the specificities of advertising research compared to other areas of study. Whereas other types of study must adhere to principles of representativeness to attain explanatory power, the concept of a target audience – and thus the method of purposive sampling – is a sine qua non of advertising effects research.
Participants were recruited early in their introductory semester, meaning that they had not yet read extensively about the topics of investigation. Theoretically, and, as the findings show, in practice, this reduces the risk of demand characteristics due to participants’ guessing the purpose of the experiment (Stafford & al., 2002: 24).
Each condition was run in three separate experimental sessions. Sixteen students were randomly assigned to each of the experimental groups and sixteen were assigned to the control group. In order to not give away the purpose of study, participants were simply told that they were participating in a study examining the effects of media. As noted above, this ‘blurring’ was undertaken to eliminate potential demand characteristics, i.e. experimental design elements that unintentionally hint to subjects about the experimenter’s hypotheses. In the present example, where the phenomenon being studied is hypothesized to function at a not fully conscious level, this is crucially important. Thus, by not presenting the research topic as “product placement effectiveness” we sought to avoid the potential threat of constant error that arises if participants recognize the goal of study and try to act in a manner consistent with the experimental treatment.
Pretest
In order to select appropriate stimulus materials, a pretest (N=105) was run separately one week prior to the actual experiment (see appendix 1 and 2). In this pretest participants demographically similar to participants in the subsequent experiment were administered a questionnaire addressing their level of identification with characters in six television shows.
Before selecting the six pretest-shows, the decision was made to focus on shows featuring placements of Apple ® computers. Computers were chosen due to their relevance to the sample population. Moreover, there seems to be an extremely strong dichotomy at work between the Macintosh ® and Microsoft ® platforms – a dichotomy that leads us to assume the

existence of strongly held associations among potential consumers. In addition to this, the dichotomy between Apple Computers ® and its rival Microsoft ® makes it very suitable for the
Implicit Association Test (see below).
In addition to their product placements, pretest shows were chosen based on a consideration of genre. This was done in acknowledgement of previous research showing that the genre aspect is crucial in viewers’ identification processes; that is, certain prototypical genres activate certain responses. In the product placement context, this has important implications for practitioners and researchers alike. For practitioners the challenge seems to lie in choosing the appropriate genres of programming on which to lay their product placement emphasis. For researchers wanting to examine the potential of the technique, it seems reasonable to focus, at least in the outset, on the genres most likely to spark viewer identification. On an overall level this issue has recently been addressed by
Frandsen and Bruun (2004). Adopting a more general media studies (rather than consumer behavior) approach, the two researchers quote Corner’s statement that:
“Genre is a principal factor in the directing of audience choice and of audience expectations and in the organizing of the subsets of cultural competencies and dispositions appropriate for watching, listening to, and reading different kinds of things” (Corner, cited in Frandsen & Bruun, 2004: 3)
As pointed out by Frandsen and Bruun, the core assumption advocated by Corner is that the notion of genre encompasses textual characteristics as well as viewers’ expectations and schemata. That is, different genres can be assumed to have different functions and offer viewers different types of experience (Frandsen & Bruun, 2004: 4).
Elaborating on Frandsen and Bruun’s general ideas, one may assume that identification is most likely to occur when watching a drama whose central characters possess desirable attributes, e.g. due to their perceived similarity to viewers. Conversely,
Frandsen and Bruun speculate, some television genres, e.g. situation comedy, may impede identification by their obvious staging, the use of the actors’ real names etc. (Frandsen &
Bruun, 2004: 11). Although it was not an explicit goal of ours to test this idea, the pretest rendered it some initial support. Hence, the one sit-com chosen for the pretest – Absolutely
Fabulous (BBC) – scored by far the lowest on identification, and was therefore chosen as experimental stimulus in the no-identification condition.
The actual pretest questionnaire asked participants to rate their degree of agreement on six semantic differential (likert) scales. Answers were summed to calculate an identification index and the two shows scoring the highest and lowest were chosen as

experimental stimuli for the identification and no-identification conditions, respectively.
Pretest questionnaires are reproduced in appendix 1 and scores are presented in appendix
2.
Stimulus Materials
Participants in the identification condition viewed a seven-minute excerpt from the 1 st season of the television drama serial The O.C. (Fox, 2004) 42 . The O.C. is an immensely popular prime time show portraying the lives of college age youth in the wealthy community of Orange County, California. Apparently, in a number of respects the action of the show is comparable to the life among college students in equally affluent Austin, Texas, where the study was conducted. This was confirmed by the pretest, in which students similar to the experimental participants showed a high level of identification with the show and its characters and a high degree of perceived similarity between their own lives and the action. The excerpt from the show - episode 25 “The Shower”, originally aired in April, 2004
- contained a relatively prominent visual placement of Apple Computers ® . During a dialogue between two of the main characters, Ryan and Seth, several close-ups show one of them in the left half of the picture while giving equal exposure to an iMac ® computer in the other half.
Participants in the no-identification condition viewed a seven-minute excerpt from the less known British show Absolutely Fabulous (BBC). Absolutely Fabulous is the story of
Edina Monsoon, a fortyish PR-person and her much more mature teenage-daughter Saffron.
The show is set in a London upper class home and depicts frequent and heavy consumption of brand name champagne, vodka, and controlled substances. Hence, compared to The
O.C., Absolutely Fabulous can be assumed to be much less recognizable to American college youth. This was confirmed by the pretest, in which the sit-com achieved the lowest level of identification and perceived similarity of all shows. Similar to the excerpt from The O.C., the excerpt (episode 6 “Small Opening”, originally aired in April 2001) contained visual placement of an Apple product; somewhat unusually, the upper class family has an Apple
Cube ® computer sitting on the kitchen table next to more ordinary kitchen appliances.
During a heated dialogue between three of the main characters, the computer attains visual prominence several times.
42
Screen shots from both shows are presented in appendix 8.

As mentioned, both placements are visual. This modality - as opposed to verbal or audiovisual - was mainly chosen because we assume it to have the most promising potential of creating subtle influence. That is, because visual information is more available in the environment where consumers make their choices (such as seeing the cereal box they recently saw on Seinfeld or the beer that was drunk on Friends), research on perceptual priming 43 suggests that congruence in modality favors a visual placement (Law & Braun-
LaTour, 2004: 75).
Procedure
Upon arrival at each of the three experimental sessions, participants were asked to draw a slip of paper that contained their identification (ID) numbers, which in turn signified their condition assignment, from a Ziploc  bag containing ID numbers for all three conditions. In order to hopefully allow us to distinguish changes in the dependent variable that are due to experimental treatment from changes due to other (confounding) factors, participants were randomly assigned to conditions. Three conditions, two experimental and one control, were run separately by three experimenters during each session. Unlike the main researcher, the two assistant experimenters were only partially aware of the nature of the study. After selecting ID numbers, participants were escorted to separate rooms – depending upon the numbers they drew – in which the conditions were run. The average number of participants per room was 5. Although the settings did not physically restrict participants from interacting, verbally or otherwise, they were instructed not to do so. Before starting the actual experiment, participants were asked to sign informed consent forms, which described their rights as research participants. This document also explained their responsibilities and gave contact information for the principal investigators of the project.
Three researchers, all male, each administered three different conditions during the three sessions, and their presence did not qualify the reported results. In order to maintain the integrity of the study, all experimenters read from a script containing instructions for each condition (see appendix 3 and 4).
After completion of the experiment, participants were given a debriefing in which all the pertinent facts about the nature and purpose of the study were provided. This
43 Law and Braun-LaTour (2004: 71) distinguish perceptual priming (where viewers respond to the modality or surface attributes of the prime) from conceptual priming (based on semantic memory, in which the meaning of words activates an existing belief and influences behavior), and emotional priming (using a prime that has an emotional connotation).

debriefing had the double purpose of counteracting potential negative effects of the deception (telling participants that the purpose was one thing when it was in fact another) and providing an educational experience.
Dependent Measure
As mentioned above, the main dependent variable of the experiment – the construct expected to be dependent on the manipulation of viewer identification – is that of associative strength (SOA). This section outlines how the SOA construct was measured using a pencil-and-paper version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, &
Schwartz, 1998) originally designed for stereotyping research (Lowery, Hardin, & Sinclair,
2001) and later adapted to examine drug related SOA (Wagner, 2001) and product placement effects (Andriasova & Wagner, 2004). While reading this description it may be helpful to consult appendix 5, in which the full measure is reproduced.
The dependent measure was administered to all participants in the same order.
Experimental participants completed the measures following stimulus presentation, while control participants simply did so after signing their consent forms. The measure assessed participants’ SOA toward Apple Computers ® based on their associations with various subbrands from the company (iPod ® , iBook ® , iTunes ® , Powerbook ® etc.). Similar to previous IAT variations, the method applied here has five judgment stages. For each stage, a list of words down the middle of a page comprises the judgment items, and evaluations are indicated by checkmarks in the appropriate right and left-hand columns.
Before entering the judgment stage, participants are shown four lists of words, two at a time, and they are asked to become familiar with the words before moving on. The first two lists include words related to Apple ® and Microsoft ® , respectively, and lists three and four include positive and negative adjectives. Eight words of each type are shown on each list, and the words are later used as items in association tasks. The list of Applerelated words include OS X, iMac, iTunes, Powerbook, Airport, Safari, iPod, and Macintosh, and the list of Microsoft words include Windows, X-Box, Outlook, Word, Media Player
Office, PowerPoint, and Explorer. The list of positive adjectives includes good, pleasant,
valuable, favorable, acceptable, nice, wonderful, and excellent. The list of negative adjectives includes the antonyms bad, unpleasant, worthless, unfavorable, unacceptable,
awful, horrible, and poor.

The first two timed stages are “practice stages”, wherein participants become familiar with the activity of categorizing words. The first of these stages list Apple ® and
Microsoft ® words, mixed in random fashion, and participants are given fifteen seconds to categorize as many as possible by placing a checkmark to the left or right. The appropriate sides are indicated at the top of the page, and participants are given verbal instructions as to the appropriate sides prior to beginning the timed judgment stage. For example:
MICROSOFT APPLE
X-BOX
POWERPOINT
IPOD
The second stage is similar to the first, except that the list is of positive and negative adjectives. For example:
POSITVE good unpleasant
NEGATIVE acceptable
The third stage is a “critical judgment phase”, one that is used to calculate SOA, and it includes all four types of words. The list begins with either a positive or negative adjective or an Apple- or Microsoft-related word. The following word comes from the opposite category (e.g. adjective). The word after that comes from the initial category
(e.g. Apple- or Microsoft-related word), and so on in that fashion. The appropriate judgment sides indicated at the top of the page include both Apple and Microsoft and
Positive and Negative. One of the sides is appropriate to check for one kind of computerword and one kind of adjective, and the opposite is the correct side for the other kind of computer-word and adjective. The specific sides match those used in the preceding practice stages. For example:
MICROSOFT or Positive APPLE or negative

worthless
OUTLOOK wonderful
ITUNES
Participants are allotted fifteen seconds to categorize as many of these items as they can, moving sequentially down the page, and this stage includes two lists given one after the other.
The fourth stage is another practice stage introduced to afford participants familiarity with categorizing Apple- and Microsoft-related words on opposite sides and therefore only includes this type of words. As the measure calculates SOA by differencing the number of items correctly categorized when pairing Apple-words with positive adjectives versus pairing Apple-words with negative adjectives, the appropriate side for
Apple ® and Microsoft ® in the fifth stage is switched while keeping positive and negative constant.
The fifth stage is again a critical phase, requiring simultaneous categorization of computer words and adjectives. This phase is the same as the third, except that the appropriate side for Microsoft ® and Apple ® is switched – in accordance with the fourth phase
– and participants are therefore categorizing them with the opposite kind of adjective. The order of pairing Apple-words with positive and negative adjectives (phases 3 and 5) along with the side participants check to categorize positive and negative were counterbalanced across participants, but this did not qualify the reported results.
Following SOA assessment, participants were administered another questionnaire in which they were asked to report their attitudes toward Apple ® and Microsoft ® using semantic differential scales anchored by the same pairs of adjectives that were used in the
IAT measure (see appendix 6). This self-reported measure was administered after the IAT in order to prevent distorting the unobtrusive measure by heightening participants’ awareness that their attitudes were being measured. Participants’ attitudes toward the products were measured by using five-point scales, and the instruction read: Please circle the numbers
near the word in each pair that best describes how you feel about…
Finally, participants in the two experimental conditions were asked to indicate their perceived degree of identification with the show they had just seen. This last questionnaire

re-used the questions and five-point likert scales from the pretest and served as a manipulation check.
Data Analysis
Given that we employed a paper-and-pencil version of the IAT, in which SOA scores are derived from the number of judgments participants can make in strictly timed congruent and incongruent association phases, the critical value is the amount of words categorized correctly within the 15 seconds allowed in each phase. More specifically, the scores for each of the two critical phases – Apple paired with positive and Apple paired with negative adjectives – were summed into positive and negatives indices, respectively, and the negative phase scores were subtracted from the positive phase scores to create an SOA
Difference Score Index (Lowery, Hardin, & Sinclair, 2001; Wagner, 2001; Andriasova &
Wagner, 2004). For self-reported attitudes toward the products, participants’ scores on the items were averaged, with equal weighting, to create a Self-Reported Attitude Index. In order to test whether SOAs and self-reported attitudes differed significantly between the treatment conditions, so-called analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were conducted on both indexes. ANOVA is a bivariate statistical technique involving the investigation of the effects of one treatment variable (stimuli) on an interval-scaled dependent variable (SOA and selfreported attitude). ANOVA is the appropriate tool to determine whether differences in mean scores between the conditions are larger than what could have occurred by chance
(Zikmund, 2003: 581).
Next, in order to assess whether the manipulation of participants’ identification with the fictional characters had been successful, a t-test was run to compare the two experimental groups. The t-test is largely similar to the ANOVA, but is preferred to the
ANOVA when assessing the difference between only two conditions (Zikmund, 577). In this ttest, shows were entered as independent variable and identification scores were entered as dependent variables.
Finally, to investigate whether, and if so how, viewers’ identification with the product-related characters influences the effect of product placements, correlation coefficients between identification scores and SOA Difference Index and Self-reported
Attitude Index were calculated. These measures of correlation indicate both the strength and the direction of the relationship between a pair of variables (Bryman & Cramer, 2001:
169). To strengthen the validity of correlation analyses, the same variables were then

subjected to regression analysis. Doing this allows us to make judgments about the quality of results of the dependent variables for each value of the independent variable (Bryman &
Cramer, 2001: 185).
All calculations were carried out using SPSS (v. 11.0 for Macintosh ® ) statistical software. Acknowledging that procedures may not be widely known among all readers, thorough descriptions are provided. At first glance, the explanations of statistical operations may seem exaggerated. However, they are motivated by the frustrations of this author when first studying reports of experimental research. As such, the following section can be seen as an attempt to bridge the gap between psychology and the humanities on the practical as well as on the theoretical level.
Results
Appendix 7 shows the complete data generated in our three-conditions between-participants experiment. Simply from looking at the raw data (illustrated in Figure 6.1 below), one gets an idea that there are in fact important differences between the three groups. Interestingly, there are noticeable differences in mean SOA Differences Index scores with the identification condition achieving by far the highest score, and the two experimental conditions scoring higher than the no-exposure control condition ( X = 9.06, -2.19, and –
6.88). Equally interesting, something similar does not seem to apply to mean scores of selfreported attitudes.

In other words, exposure to product placements embedded in a television show that sparks viewer identification seemingly affects product-related SOA in a way unparalleled by placements embedded in a show that does not. In fact participants in the identification condition are the only ones to achieve a positive SOA Difference Index score; that is, for participants in the no-identification and control conditions, the dual task of categorizing computer-nouns and valenced adjectives was easier when Apple-words were paired with negative adjectives and Microsoft-words with positive.

0
-2
4
2
-4
-6
-8
10
8
6
1
1
1
2
2
2
3
3
3
SOA
Self-reported attitudes identification no-identification control
Figure 6.1
When effects are measured as differences in participants’ self-reported attitudes, results
(fig. 6.1) show no significant difference between conditions. Hence, exposure to product placements seems to have no influence on how participants explicitly evaluate the products.
ANOVA
To get a more qualified measure of the observed differences, we start by comparing the mean scores on the dependent variables (SOA Difference Score Index and Self-reported
Attitude Index) in the three conditions. To do this we use a common statistical tool, analysis of variance (ANOVA), in which an estimate of the between-groups variance is compared with an estimate of the within-groups variance by dividing the former by the latter 44 . The result of this division, referred to as the F-ratio, increases as the magnitude of the variation between groups becomes greater than those within groups. The total amount of variance in the dependent variable (SOA Difference Score Index and Self-reported Attitude Index, respectively) can be thought of as comprising two elements: that which is due to the independent variable (identification) and that which is due to other factors. The latter component essentially consists of errors in the research design or execution, whereas the
44
Variance is a measure of data dispersion showing how much each score deviates from a mean.

former can be expected to result from experimental manipulation. If the between-groups variance (i.e. the variance resulting from experimental treatment) is considerably larger than that within-groups (i.e. the variance resulting from error), then the value of the F-ratio will be higher, implying that the differences between the means are unlikely to be due to chance.
Terminology for variance estimates is derived from the calculation procedures.
Hence, an explanation of the terms used to calculate the F-Ratio should clarify the meaning of the analysis of variance technique. The within-groups estimated variance (or mean-square as it is often referred to) is the within-group sum-of-squares divided by the degrees of freedom. The term degrees of freedom (d.f.) – a term associated with any statistic – simply refers to the number of components which are free to vary (Bryman & Cramer, 2001: 121).
The number of degrees of freedom is equal to the number of observations minus the number of constraints or assumptions needed to calculate a statistical term. The sum of squares is the sum of squared differences between each score in a group and its mean, summed across all three groups. The between-groups estimated variance is obtained by subtracting each group’s mean from the overall mean, squaring them, multiplying them by the number of cases in each group, and summing the result.
ANOV A
SOA Difference Index
Between Groups
W ithin Groups
Total
Sum of
Squares
2146,875
2965,125
5112,000 df
2
45
47
Mean S quare
1073,438
65,892
F
16,291
Sig.
,000
Table 6.1 One-way analysis of variance comparing SOA Difference Score Index across conditions
For 2 degrees of freedom in the numerator and 45 degrees of freedom in the denominator, an F of 3.23 is required to show statistically significant difference (see Zikmund (1997: 585) for a table of required F-values). Hence, based on the analysis of variance (F(48)= 16.291,
p= .0001) we can conclude that the differences in SOA between conditions were in fact larger than could be expected by chance. In fact, table 6.1 shows a significance level of
.0001; that is, our results have a mere .001 percent probability of occurring by chance.

To examine the effect of experimental treatment on participants’ self-reported attitudes toward the placed products, the exact same calculation of F-ratio was repeated entering Self-reported Attitude Index as dependent variable.
ANOV A
Self-reported at titude
Between Groups
Sum of
Squares
20,792 df
2
Mean S quare
10,396
F
,244
Sig.
,785
W ithin Groups 1921,125 45 42,692
Total 1941,917 47
Table 6.2 One-way analysis of variance comparing Self-reported attitude Index across conditions
Interestingly, the F-ratio for self-reported attitudes failed to reach statistical significance
(F(48)= 0.2435, p= .785). In other words, our results show no apparent connection between exposure to placements and expressed product-attitudes. In terms of methodology, the lack of statistical significance implies that there are considerable differences between implicit and explicit measures of product-related attitudes. Hence, H1 and H2 receive initial support. To interpret the findings further, however, we need to look more closely into the influence of identification on measured and reported attitudes.
T-test: Manipulation Check
First, however, a calculation was carried out to assess whether the manipulation of participants’ identification with the shows (based on the pretest) had been successful. Given that the only difference between the two experimental groups was the show they watched, we can assume that any significant difference in mean identification scores is due to the manipulation of stimuli. Hence, to determine whether the two groups differed, a t-test was conducted. The t-test, which is conceptually similar to the ANOVA, is used to determine whether the means of two samples differ significantly. It does so by comparing the differences between the two means with the standard error of the difference in the means of the two samples. The underlying assumption is that the difference in means between the groups, unlike the standard error of the difference in means, should not be normally

distributed 45 . In other words, the further the difference in the means of the two samples is from zero, the less likely it is that this difference is due to chance. Before calculating the value, the confidence level was set to .95. That is, provided the calculations showed a difference, the criteria allowed us to be 95 percent certain that this was not due to chance.
Group Statistics
Manipulation check
Condition assignment
Identification
No identification
N
16
16
Mean
5,25
-4,31
Std. Deviation
4,266
2,798
Std. Error
Mean
1,067
,700
Independent Samples Test
Levene's Test for
Equality of Variances t-test for Equality of Means
Manipulation check Equal variances as sumed
Equal variances not ass umed
F
1,457
Sig.
,237 t
7,497
7,497 df
30
25,890
Sig. (2-tailed)
,000
,000
Mean
Difference
9,56
9,56
Std. Error
Difference
1,275
1,275
95% Confidence
Interval of the
Difference
Lower Upper
6,958 12,167
6,940 12,185
Table 6.3 t-test comparing identification scores in identification and no-identification conditions.
With 30 degrees of freedom at a confidence interval of 0.95, the two-tailed t-value needs to be higher than 2.042 to be considered statistically significant (see Zikmund (1997: 711) for a table of required t-values). Hence, by conventional criteria we can consider our experimental manipulation of identification to have been successful (t(32) = 7.497, p =
.0001).
Correlation and Regression: Influence of Identification on SOA and Self-reported Attitudes
Finally, the more exact nature of the relationship between identification and productrelated attitudes is assessed. This is done by first performing a correlation analysis. As mentioned in the introduction to data analysis, correlation scores are used as ‘yardsticks’ whereby the intensity or strength of relationships can be gauged. More specifically, we want to estimate whether participants’ level of identification did indeed influence the changes in their product-related SOA and self-reported attitudes in the way we hypothesized. To
45 Normal distribution is a symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution that describes the expected probability distribution of many chance occurrences.

provide such estimates, correlation coefficients are calculated. When the variables of interest are interval/ratio, as is the case with our indexes and identification scores, the most common measure of correlation is Pearson’s r (Bryman & Cramer, 2001: 170).
The first step to calculating Pearson’s r is plotting each individual case (pairs of identification score and SOA/attitude for each participant) into scatter diagrams. These diagrams illustrate the relationship between variables for each participant and thus provide us with a useful initial impression of whether the variables generally correlate. More specifically, correlation between variables is indicated if cases fall at or closely around a straight line. Below, diagrams are presented for each of the four potential correlations: (1)
Identification score and SOA in the identification condition, (2) Identification score and selfreported attitude in the identification condition, (3) Identification score and SOA in the noidentification condition, and (4) Identification score and self-reported attitude in the noidentification condition.
30 20
20 10
10 0
0 -10
-10
-4 -2 0 2 4 6 8
Identification scor e ( ID)
Figure 6.2 Identification score & SOA
(identification condition)
10 12
-20
-4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Identification scor e ( ID)
Figure 6.3 Identification score & Self-reported attitude (identification condition)

20 20
10
10
0
0
-10
-20
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2
-10
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2
Identification scor e ( no-ID)
Figure 6.4 Identification score & SOA (noidentification condition)
Identification scor e ( no-ID)
Figure 6.5 Identification score & Self-reported attitude (no-identification condition)
Although scatter diagrams are useful aids to understanding the nature of correlation, to use the concept in a more formal manner, we still need to calculate the numeric value of
Pearson’s r. Hence, a short introduction: Pearson’s r allows the strength and direction of linear relationships between variables to vary between –1 and +1. If the value of r equals
+1.0, there is a perfect positive linear (straight-line) relationship - as identification increases, so does attitude/SOA score. If the value of r equals –1.0, a perfect negative linear relationship, or a perfect inverse relationship, is indicated - as identification increases, attitude/SOA score decreases. No correlation is indicated if r equals 0. What is a large correlation? Bryman and Cramer (2001: 174) suggest the following: 0.19 and below is very low; 0.20 to 0.39 is low; 0.40 to 0.69 is modest; 0.70 to 0.89 is high; and 0.90 to 1 is very high.
Below we report the results (Pearson’s r and significance level) of correlation analyses on all four combinations of identification and SOA/self-reported attitudes. Given that the relationships we seek to investigate are one-directional – how does identification influence
SOA and self-reported attitudes - we use the so-called one-tailed correlation test.

Correlations
Identification score (ID)
SOA Difference Score
Index (ID)
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N
Identification score (ID)
1
,
16
,739**
,001
16
**. Correlation is s ignificant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed).
SOA
Difference
Score Index
(ID)
,739**
,001
16
1
16
,
Table 6.4 Identification score & SOA (identification condition)
Correl ations
Identification sc ore (ID)
1
Self-reported att itude index
(ID)
,279 Identification sc ore (ID) Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N 16
, ,148
16
Self-reported at titude index (ID)
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
,279
,148
1
,
N 16 16
Table 6.5 Identification score & Self-reported attitude (identification condition)
Correl ations
Identification sc ore
(no-ID)
SOA Difference
Sc ore Index (no-ID)
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N
Identification sc ore (no-ID)
1
16
,
,316
,116
16
SOA
Difference
Sc ore Index
(no-ID)
,316
,116
16
1
,
16
Table 6.6 Identification score & SOA (no-identification condition)

Correl ations
Identification sc ore
(no-ID)
Self-reported attitude index (no-ID)
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N
Pearson Correlation
Sig. (1-tailed)
N
Identification sc ore (no-ID)
1
,
16
,263
,162
16
Self-reported att itude index
(no-ID)
,263
,162
16
1
16
,
Table 6.7 Identification score & Self-reported attitude (no-identification condition)
What we are looking for in these tables are the two values in the upper right hand corner,
Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) and the level of statistical significance (Sig.). As in the
t-test above, we are looking for at least 95 percent certainty that demonstrated effects are not due to chance. In the tables such certainty is indicated if the value for “Sig. (1-tailed)” is .05 or below. As the tables show, only the correlation between identification and SOA
Difference Score Index in the identification condition reaches statistical significance (r(32) =
.739, p= .001). This finding is crucial to the overall study as well as to the testing of experimental hypotheses. A statistically significant correlation between identification and
SOA in the identification condition, and lack thereof in all other relations, indicates that the strength of viewers’ product-related associations can be changed with product placements.
However, the effect of product placements is dramatically mediated by viewers’ level of identification with the program.
These interpretations are elaborated in the concluding discussion. Before we get that far, however, the crucial findings are illustrated by one last step in the analysis of our experimental data, the calculation of regression. The concept of regression is closely related to that of correlation in that it shares many of the basic assumptions of Pearson’s r, notably the idea that relationships among variables are linear. Compared to Pearson’s r, however, regression analysis goes a step further, works from the assumption of a causal relationship between two variables, and provides us with the actual line of best fit between the variables. Similar to correlation coefficient, the regression is affected by the amount of variance in either of the variables concerned. For example, if one variable has a restricted range and the other a wider range, the size of the correlation coefficient and the precision

of the linear relationship may both be reduced compared with if both were of equally wide variance.
Most interestingly, the strength and direction of the relationship between identification and SOA in the identification condition are clearly illustrated, when we draw the line of best fit. The pairs of identification scores and SOA Difference Score Indexes fall around a straight line (see figure 6.6); that is, as viewers’ identification with the program increases, so does the effect of product placement on their product-related SOA. More specifically, the regression shows that for each one-unit increase in identification score, SOA
Difference Score increases .739.
30
20
10
0
-10
-4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Identification scor e ( ID)
Figure 6.6 Regression: Identification score & SOA (identification condition)
Discussion
Overall, the four hypotheses received various levels of support. H1 was partially supported in that experimental group participants exhibited significantly more positive product-related
SOA as compared to the control group, but only participants in the identification condition achieved positive mean scores. Next, H2 went supported, as exposure to product placements did not significantly influence self-reported attitudes. On the contrary, mean scores showed the control group – who had watched no placement at all – to express the most positive product-attitudes. This finding seems to confirm the assumption that people are generally either biased when expressing attitudes toward products and ads, or simply unable to assess these attitudes. H3 and H4 were also supported, as viewers’ level of identification with

programs significantly predicted their product-related SOA, but not their self-reported attitude. What this means is that, beyond leading to awareness and memory for included products, placements have demonstrable persuasive effects in that they can be shown to alter SOA – a judgmental basis of decision-making. Overall, the pattern of reported data suggests that testing placements with SOA measures may be a better way to investigate persuasive effects of product placements and that self-reported attitude measures, while having their benefits, may not be as sensitive to the subtler form of influence placements exert.
Although the pertinent issues have already been discussed to some extent, we now turn to a more thorough discussion of the general aspects of experimental studies such as the one reported here. First, the question of validity must be addressed: Does showing television excerpts out of context to a non-representative sample amount to any predicative power? Second, there is the question of generalizability: Do our findings apply to anyone but college undergraduates in a media lab? Not surprisingly, we tend to answer both questions in the affirmative. In order to understand our (naïve) belief, however, one must keep in mind that we do not claim to simulate real-world behavior in the laboratory. Instead we try to isolate one crucial element of the exposure-to-behavior relationship, the influence of exposure to different media content on attitude accessibility (associative strength).
Furthermore, one needs to remember that the potential generality of our findings lies in the congruency of stimulus and target audience. That is, what we have hoped to demonstrate is that if the television shows, in which product placements are embedded, spark
identification in the target audience, then the effect of placements on viewers’ latent attitudes is increased. Albeit limited in scope, we consider this type of finding to be an apt illustration of the main asset of experimental research compared to other methods. By focusing on one variable (attitude/SOA) and trying to control all other variables, we aimed to assess a causal (rather than correlational or indicial) relationship between features of the media product and attitudinal impact. To corroborate the findings quantitatively, one might attempt to replicate the experiment with different ‘target audiences’, i.e. by recruiting participants socio-demographically different from students and running a new pretest to establish which stimuli attract high and low levels of identification in the given group.
To assess the present experiment in terms of reliability, one needs to see it in connection with previous research applying similar methods. Although the body of previous research is not extensive, one may draw attention to at least three conceptually similar

studies indicating that SOA measures are in fact a useful way to assess the attitudinal impact of social and mass mediated stimuli. The conceptual link between the studies referenced here is their common interest in practices that are not suitable for self-reported measures.
The first study to apply the unobtrusive IAT measure (Lowery & al., 2001) used it to investigate the concept of racial stereotyping. The key finding from the study was that although people explicitly renounce any kind of stereotyping, unobtrusive measures as well as observed behavior show that stereotyping does in fact occur. In a similar vein, Wagner
(2004; Wagner & Sundar, 2003) studied young people’s reactions toward anti-drug advertising and found SOA measures to be more veridical than self-reported attitude measures. Wagner did this by running both types of measure and comparing results to actual drug use in a population demographically similar to the research sample. Whereas selfreported measures found almost everybody to be strongly negative toward drug use, SOA measures as well as actual statistics showed this to be an overly romantic picture. Compared to its application in studies on social issues, motivated by the need to circumvent a “social desirability bias”, the initial use of the IAT in product placement research was a result of more practical concerns. Hence, Andriasova and Wagner (2004) hypothesized placements to be of a nature that does not lead to detectable change in attitudes but which may never the less have an impact on viewers. Comparing self-reported measures to the IAT, Andriasova and Wagner found just this to be the case. In summary, our results can be seen as a corroboration of earlier research findings, further demonstrating the usefulness of applying unobtrusive measures.

7. GENERAL DISCUSSION
This thesis has focused on product placement in television as an example of unobtrusive advertising. The work was inspired in part by the impression that product placement is becoming an increasingly important form of persuasive communication and in part by a discontent with previous research in the technique’s effectiveness.
Based on a thorough review of previous research in advertising and product placement and a discussion of relevant theories, an experiment was designed to test two main hypotheses. First, it was suggested that while product placement consumption may not lead to a change in viewers’ self-reported attitudes toward placed products, placements could influence consumers’ product-related strength of association (SOA) and thus have a persuasive ability. Second, a review of theories about the fiction viewing experience led us to suggest that effects may be mediated by viewers’ identification with product-related characters. Both hypotheses received empirical support.
Although the present study is an exploratory investigation into the effects of placements on SOA, the results are promising for researchers and practitioners. In reporting attitudes, the subtlety of placements may hinder consideration of their persuasive influence, but our findings confirm Andriasova and Wagner’s (2004) theory that such passive processing
can change SOA. Also, as experimental participants’ SOAs were driven by their level of identification with fictional content, the results suggest that viewing placements may simulate real-life product experience.
Although more effortful processing is generally thought to result in greater persuasion
(see Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Petty & Wegener, 1999), it can be argued that this depends on the way in which studies theorize and measure attitudes. If attitudes are positioned as the sum of all brand-related beliefs and their evaluations (see Ajzen, 1991; Ajzen & Fishbein,
1980), then effortfully-produced attitudes should be more persistent. However, attitudes can also be thought of as a tendency to avoid or approach an object, influencing perception of object and situation – and in turn behavior – in a less-controlled fashion. In this way, attitudes produce an affective response predicated on valenced SOA (Fazio, 1990), which may be difficult to alter through argumentation, and one reason for which is that strong associations can influence the perception of new information during the learning process
(Fazio, 1990; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999). A strong association can lead someone to see new data about an attitude object or category as incredulous, or it can guide the person to rationalize the information to fit the association, often further strengthening it. If attitudes

are theorized in this way as opposed to the sum of all beliefs, then central route processing may not enjoy the longevity advantage.
Our findings may also support an early suggestion by Krugman (1965) that persuasion from ads can occur with little or no conscious awareness, when the viewing audience
“lets down its guard to the repetitive commercial use of the television medium and… easily changes its ways of perceiving products and brands and its purchasing behavior without thinking very much about it at the time of TV exposure or at any time prior to purchase, and without changing verbalized attitudes
(Krugman, 1965: 354, italics added)
Krugman’s argument has remained largely untested, but it may help explain the influence of product placements. Given the subtlety of placements, their influence may not initially lead to a change in expressed attitudes, but their effects may be more visible at a later point if placements alter the automatic activation of attitudes toward a brand, for instance at the point of purchase.
Methodological Implications
In discussing the methodological implication of the research reported in this thesis, we inevitably find ourselves discussing the conceptual divide between qualitative and quantitative methodologies. In an acknowledgement of the basic assumptions of qualitative audience research, we agree that people (viewers) are free to make sense of media products and that their verbalized responses will differ radically. At the same time, however, we have aimed to condition the strong focus of audience researchers on these verbalized effects.
Instead we have sought to promote awareness of indirect (i.e. non-verbalizable) media effects. Furthermore, in our experimental design we have tried to challenge the claim made by Schrøder & al. that “all audience research is obtrusive” (2003: 16). Of course the participants in our study were all well aware that they were participating in research.
However, by not revealing the exact nature and purpose of the study and by applying a measure that should not allow participants conscious control of their responses, we aimed to overcome one of the major threats to the validity of audience research. Compared to previous use of the IAT measure in product placement research (Andriasova & Wagner,
2004), this study marks a step forward. Whereas Andriasova and Wagner relied on the concept of brand essence (in representing the placed brand through its most important attributes/benefits), we took a more direct approach in using actual brand names. Of course

this is in part a change brought about by the brands themselves (Apple computers versus
Snuggle detergent), but still it makes for results that require less interpretation
Overall, the pattern of reported data suggests that SOA measures may be a more precise gauge of product placements’ persuasive effects than self-reported attitudes.
Supporting a number of studies that compare the predictive abilities of SOA measures to self-report questionnaires (see Dovidio & Fazio, 1991; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999; Wagner
& Sundar, 2003), these findings also demonstrate the superior veridicality of the SOA measures – predicting more placement characteristics than did self-reported attitudes.
Perhaps most importantly, while the study did not uncover self-report attitudinal effects – also in line with prior research – persuasive placement effects were shown using SOA measures.
A further refinement of the SOA measure might utilize more sophisticated computerbased response latency SOA measures such as PsyScope or SuperLab (see http://www.superlab.com) to prime participants with specific visual brand identifiers.
Computer-based measures can best be understood as a fusion of the two measures described in this study, evaluative semantic priming and the IAT. Similar to the unobtrusive measures described above, the computer-measures rely on the presence of facilitation as an indication that the evaluation associated with the primed attitude object has been activated on presentation of the object. The computer-based measure consists of two critical stages. In the first (the priming stage) participants are primed with a visual stimulus thought to identify the concept (e.g. brand) of interest. The concept-identifier is shown on the computer-screen at duration just above the threshold of conscious awareness. In the second stage (the response latency stage) participants categorize adjectives appearing on screen by pressing either a “positive” or a “negative” button. During this categorization task, response latencies are continuously measured by the computer. Finally, the facilitation effect is calculated as the difference in mean latency between “compatible prime-adjective” and
“incompatible prime-adjective”. The use of computer-based priming and measurement would offer a number of advantages compared to more traditional methods. Perhaps most importantly the experimental software allows the use of both graphic and verbal primes, as opposed to the word-only priming of the IAT. One may assume this use of more realistic stimuli to further increase external validity (e.g. see Fazio & al. (1995); Hermans, de
Houwer, & Eelen (1994) for a discussion of realistic primes). Moreover, the almost-subliminal duration of priming further reduces the risk of conscious control of responses. Compared to

the pencil-and-paper IAT, in which participants inevitably gain some knowledge of what is being assessed (Lowery & al., 2001), this seems a more reliable way of securing unobtrusiveness.
Practical Implications
On the ontological level, part of the purpose of effect studies is to understand how we can better communicate – how various characteristics of content and execution influence the impact of communication on receivers. Obviously, such knowledge is interesting and has implications for various types of senders. Although our study was driven by an academic pursuit of knowledge, it can also be seen as a fusion of administrative and critical research.
Among the potential managerial implications – for public and private communicators alike – one could mention that the method may yield insight on how to better reach the receivers and attain desired effects. Such insight would be useful in planning as well as a pre-, and post-testing context: In a media situation where costs have continued to accelerate at a rate greater than the rate of inflation (MacKenzie & Lutz, 1989: 48), it has become increasingly important for advertisers to assess potential effects of the various strategies at hand.
More specifically, the finding that effects may be achieved without receivers being aware of any influence, suggests that practitioners might successfully abandon their conception of effectiveness as recall and recognition. In a not so distant future our approach may be developed further to dramatically change the field of applied advertising research.
In fact one company, Brighthouse Enterprises, is already successfully conducting
“neuromarketing” research; that is, employing a method conceptually similar to the one demonstrated here. As the term implies, however, Brighthouse mainly focuses on the psycho-physiological effects that occur as a result of exposure to persuasive communication.
It is no coincidence that this extreme development has occurred in the United States. In
Denmark the tradition of professional research is much less prevalent. In fact, to an outside observer, it may seem as though the question of effectiveness is gauged from a lay perspective, rather than studied scientifically, among Danish practitioners.
Although we have not addressed the practice of product placement in a normative perspective, the findings still raise a number of issues relevant to the public policy discussion of unobtrusive persuasive communication. Specifically, the demonstration of less conscious effects raises entirely different and more pressing public policy issues than earlier studies showing no effect on self-reported attitudes. The blurring of the lines between

entertainment and persuasion that occurs when commercial stimuli are embedded in a
‘neutral’ context is especially problematic when directed toward children. Thus, an awareness of the potential power of product placement messages is needed by program makers and regulators in order to protect children against unsuitable practice.
Conversely, as discussed by Wagner and Sundar (2003), potential effects on a less conscious level could be used in public service contexts, e.g. to influence attitudes toward drug use, drunk driving or similar public health issues. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that any finding pertaining the effectiveness of product placements might also apply to behavioral effects from exposure to other stimuli. For example, to the much debated issue of television and movie violence. Since neither placed products nor violent episodes are processed as the central aspects of televised narratives (e.g. see Comstock, 2004: 194), one may assume similar processes to be at work in the exposure-to-behavior relationship.
Conclusion
In conclusion, our findings indicate that conceptualizing the effects of unobtrusive advertising as something that occurs on a conscious level and investigating them along the lines of recall and recognition is inadequate. Instead, the present study helps demonstrate the usefulness of unobtrusive SOA measures in product placement research. In doing so, it reinforces and reiterates recent calls for the increased use of implicit effectiveness measures (e.g. Law & Braun-Latour, 2004). Although a plethora of independent and individual difference variables remain untested – and the measures, themselves, can be continuously improved – as the findings of this exploratory study show, SOA is a promising measure for gauging placement effectiveness.

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