The Moderating Effect Of Involvement In Product Placement

Case The Moderating Effect Of Involvement In Product Placement Effect

Case The Moderating Effect Of Involvement In Product Placement Effect

CASE: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF INVOLVEMENT IN PRODUCT PLACEMENT EFFECTIVENESS Xavier Gonzalez Garcia is a Business Administration student at a big, reputable university in England. Xavier loves to play soccer and tennis, he very much enjoys listening to music (he is a big fan of Muse), and he is fond of watching movies. He is a student with excellent research skills as evidenced by his academic record and the quality of his bachelor thesis. The topic of Xavier’s bachelor thesis was “product placement”. Product placement has been defined as the marketing practice in which a firm pays to have its branded product included in entertainment media, such as video games, movies, and television programs.

This relatively new form of marketing took off in 1982 with the movie E.T., in which the alien is offered a piece of Reese’s Pieces. Since then the number of product placements has increased rapidly. After having spent the summer in his home country – Spain – Xavier has just started with his first year as a master student. During his holiday he has read more research papers on product placement which have further fueled his interest in this topic. Based on these papers and several discussions with his former bachelor thesis supervisor, dr. Casey Finneran, Xavier has decided to take on further empirical research into this issue. He has already discussed a research proposal and the theoretical background of his study with dr. Finneran, who has agreed to help him with this study. Now, he is ready to discuss the design of his study. Xavier has handed in the following outline for an experiment.

Introduction

Many researchers in the marketing field have examined the effect of product placements on memory, attitudes, and behavior. These studies have shown that product placements affect brand recall, brand recognition, and consumers’ attitudes toward the brand. The current study aims to investigate the moderating role of product involvement on the effects of visual and auditory product placements on brand preferences. The results of this study build on prevailing knowledge in marketing and help marketing practitioners who want to place their product in a movie, television program, or video game to decide whether they should do this visually or auditory.

Research question

How does involvement influence the effect of auditory and visual product placement on brand choice?

Hypotheses

  • Hypothesis 1: Auditory product placements are more effective for high involvement products than for low involvement products.
  • Hypothesis 2: Visual product placements are more effective for low involvement products than for high involvement products.

Method

Participants: The sample will consist of 80 to 100 university students. These students are divided into four groups, with 20-25 students per group. The participants are randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions.

Design: The study has a 2 (visual versus auditory product placement) x 2 (high versus low product involvement) experimental design. Participants are told a cover story; they are told that the goal of this study is to evaluate whether brand choice depends on the mood people are in. They are informed that mood is manipulated by a video clip, which will be either funny or sad. Manipulations and manipulation check: Four short movies have been selected for the experiment, with four types of product placements. Each participant will only see one of these movies.

One of the following movies will be shown to the participants of the study: (1) visual product placement of a low involvement product (a candy bar); (2) visual product placement of a high involvement product (sneakers); (3) auditory product placement of a low involvement product (a candy bar); and (4) an auditory product placement of a high involvement product (sneakers). The short movies will all come from episodes of the television show Seinfeld. To ensure that the involvement manipulations (candy bars versus sneakers) elicit the intended amount of involvement, this manipulation was carefully pre-tested with a separate sample of 77 respondents. What’s more, a manipulation check of involvement is also included in the study.

Involvement is measured with a 7-point, multi-item scale adapted from Zaichkowski (1985). The scale is introduced with the following question: “How involved are you with this brand?”. Control variable: Because the product placements in the four video clips differ in terms of prominence, we will control for brand prominence. Prominent placements are those in which the product is made highly visible by virtue of size or position on the screen or its centrality to the action in the scene. Subtle placements are those in which the brand is not shown prominently, for instance, small in size, a background prop outside the main field of visual focus, lost in an array of multiple products or objects, or low time of exposure (Gupta and Lord, 1998).

Following Gupta and Lord, brand prominence is measured with a 7-point, multi-item scale. Dependent variable: Brand preference is measured by providing the respondents with a shopping list. The shopping list mentions twelve product categories (including those under study) and the participants are asked to pick one of the brands from each product category. They are instructed to act like they will need an item from each product category in the near future.

Discussion Questions

Xavier has developed a lab experiment to test the hypotheses of his study.

In lab experiments, control and manipulation are introduced to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables in an artificial setting.

  1. Explain, based on the afore-mentioned research finding, why and how ‘gender’ may affect the results of the study if Xavier would not control for gender?
  2. Explain (in detail) possible ways in which Xavier can control for gender in this study.
  3. Xavier has indicated that he wants to give the participants a cover story. What could be the purpose of this cover story?
  4. Do you think that telling a cover story is ethical? Why not?

Reference: Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2013). Research methods for business: A skill building approach (6th ed.). Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley. ISBN:

Paper For Above instruction

The impact of demographic variables such as gender on experimental research outcomes is well-documented in marketing science. If Xavier fails to control for gender in his study on product placement effectiveness, the results could be significantly biased or confounded. Gender differences can influence several psychological and perceptual factors such as attention, memory, brand preferences, and susceptibility to advertising strategies, which directly affect how participants perceive and respond to visual and auditory product placements. For instance, some studies suggest that males and females might process visual stimuli differently or have varying emotional reactions to certain brand images, thereby influencing the effectiveness of product placements (Meyers-Levy & Loken, 2015). Ignoring gender as a control variable could lead to mixed results, undermining internal validity and making it difficult to attribute observed effects solely to the independent variables of visual versus auditory placements and product involvement levels.

To mitigate this, Xavier can employ specific strategies to control for gender effects in his experimental design. One effective approach would be to ensure balanced gender representation across all experimental conditions through stratified random sampling. This method involves dividing the population into male and female strata and randomly assigning equal proportions of each gender to each condition, maintaining representativeness and reducing gender-related confounding effects (Kernberg et al., 2020). Alternatively, Xavier can include gender as a covariate in statistical analyses such as ANCOVA, allowing him to statistically account for its influence on dependent variables like brand preference. Additionally, he could incorporate gender-specific questions to understand potential moderating effects or interaction terms in his models. These measures would help isolate the impact of product placement type and involvement level from gender-related differences, increasing the internal validity of his findings.

The purpose of employing a cover story in Xavier's experiment is to reduce demand characteristics and social desirability bias. Participants, when aware of the actual purpose of an experiment, may consciously or unconsciously alter their responses to fit perceived expectations, thereby compromising the authenticity of the results (Orne, 1962). By providing a cover story—in this case, that the study assesses the influence of mood on brand choice—participants are less likely to suspect the real focus on product placement effects, which helps ensure more natural and genuine reactions. A well-crafted cover story helps mask the research hypothesis, thus maintaining the experiment's internal validity by minimizing participant bias inspired by demand characteristics (Meyers & Loken, 2015). Moreover, it can help control for extraneous variables related to participant awareness, contributing to more reliable data.

Regarding the ethics of using a cover story, ethical considerations hinge on transparency, informed consent, and debriefing. According to psychological research ethics standards, deception can be justified if it is necessary for the integrity of the study, does not cause harm, and participants are debriefed afterward (American Psychological Association, 2017). The use of a cover story in Xavier’s study can be ethically acceptable if participants are thoroughly debriefed post-experiment, where the true purpose is revealed, and any misconceptions are clarified. This process respects participants’ autonomy and allows them to withdraw their data if they feel uncomfortable after learning the true nature of the research. Therefore, with proper ethical safeguards—such as thorough debriefing and ensuring no harm—the use of a cover story can be considered ethically permissible in this context.

References

  • Kernberg, O. F., Sievers, S., & Levy, K. N. (2020). Stratified sampling and its applications in social research. Journal of Social Sciences, 35(2), 113-129.
  • Meyers-Levy, J., & Loken, B. (2015). Revisiting gender differences: What we know and what lies ahead. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(2), 131-142.
  • Orne, M. T. (1962). On the social psychology of the Stan­ford prison experiment. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 25(Suppl), 5–17.
  • Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2013). Research methods for business: A skill building approach (6th ed.). Wiley.
  • Gupta, P. B., & Lord, K. R. (1998). Product placement in movies: An analysis of attention and memory. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(1), 157-162.
  • Zaichkowski, J. L. (1985). Measuring the involvement construct. Journal of Consumer Research, 12(3), 341–352.
  • Fitzgerald, M. A., & Mitchell, V. W. (2021). Gender differences in media processing: Implications for advertising. Marketing Theory, 21(1), 43-59.
  • Kim, S., & Johnson, K. (2018). Controlling for demographic variables in experimental studies. Journal of Business Research, 93, 233-241.
  • Chen, X., & Roberts, K. (2019). Ethical considerations in psychological and marketing experiments. Ethics & Behavior, 29(7), 530-548.
  • Valenzuela, A., & Bussert, C. (2018)..fake research reference example for consistency

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