Search results

This chapter takes a deeper look into understanding an increasingly popular advertising tool – product placement (PP) – by defining it, examining its usage and measuring its consequences, both from a marketing and a consumer welfare perspective. It also tries to reconcile these contradictory perspectives to achieve a common ground and a positive outcome for all stakeholders.

A literature review of current research findings, from both a marketing and public policy perspective, is used to arrive at a more balanced viewpoint of PP.

Public policy makers are advised to improve the consistency of current regulations in terms of PP disclosure in the media, regardless of where a programme is produced or broadcast, to help create savvier consumers. Marketers are advised not to fight against PP regulations, but rather to develop their creativity in order to avoid consumers rejecting the disclosed placement.

We address consumers’ ability to raise a protective shield when they encounter a PP situation. We explain how certain disclosures regarding the commercial intent of PP may be more effective than others, thereby empowering consumers to manage their behaviour and make informed decisions. We then describe how PP can be used to educate consumers about pro-social issues in an entertaining, non-patronising way.

This chapter proposes to go beyond the usual divide between advertisers and policy makers to arrive at a balanced view, considering the positive role that PP may play in education, while mitigating its potential negative impacts through effective consumer training.

The main purpose of this chapter is to highlight the latest research on the implicit influence of online game advertising on children and to discuss some possible solutions to help them cope with this implicit influence.

This chapter reviews key theories and relevant empirical evidence in the literature on advertising to children in order to highlight the implicit influence of online game advertising on children.

Children can be influenced by online game advertising outside their awareness.

The chapter challenges the effectiveness of current advertising literacy education.

This chapter highlights the implicit influence of online game advertising on children. It also proposes alternative approaches to current advertising literacy education to help children cope with the implicit influence.

This chapter will look at the development, types and effectiveness of new forms of advertising in television (NFAs) and report on the current state of research in the field.

The most relevant contributions from the literature describing the practice and assessing the effectiveness of NFAs are presented and reviewed.

NFAs have emerged in response to the decreased effectiveness of conventional television advertising (spots) due to audience fragmentation, zapping, saturation and increased competition. Currently, NFAs are widely used around the world. Although the available empirical evidence indicates that NFAs are more effective than traditional spots in terms of recall, this chapter points to a need for better scientific understanding of key aspects of these new formats. Given the important role that NFAs play in how today’s television advertising market is managed, further research is needed on their effectiveness.

The literature on the practice and analysis of the effectiveness of NFAs is unfocused and varied, making it difficult to adequately determine whether the growing use of these formats can be justified on the grounds of proven arguments regarding the qualities that set them apart from traditional spots. In this regard, the summary provided in this chapter of both the state of knowledge about different types of new advertising formats on TV and their effectiveness is an important reflection of the state of the art in research on these formats.

This study aims to explain how program liking, program connectedness, and product category involvement influence brand attitudes as a result of advertiser funded programming.

We conduct a field study on a panel of real television viewers that were surveyed one week after the final episode of an advertiser funded fashion program was broadcasted. A moderated mediation model is constructed and tested that captures the interplay of three determinants of brand attitudes: program liking, product category involvement, and program connectedness.

Liking of the program is transferred to brand attitudes. This effect is complementarily mediated by connectedness with the program, and this mediation is moderated by product category involvement. Program liking only spills over to brand attitude through connectedness for viewers with moderate to high levels of involvement with the sponsor product category.

The findings add to the understanding of the role of program liking and program connectedness in the formation of brand attitudes. Although prior research has established that liking and connectedness are indeed an important determinant of brand attitudes, this research unveils product category involvement as an important boundary condition for this effect.

Consumers can develop liking for even an advanced form of brand placement, an Advertiser Funded Program (AFP). When consumers’ evaluations of the program are positive, they connect to the program on a personal basis, also leading to positive brand effects. Advertising practitioners should focus on the meaningful integration of their brand in a context that is involving for their target audience.

Since Karl Marx fashioned his theory of capitalism in the nineteenth century, scholars have continually updated Marxian theory to capture the pervasiveness of commodity relations in modern society. Influenced by Georg Lukács and Henri Lefebvre, the members of the French avant-guard group, the Situationist International (1957–1972), developed an intransigent critique of consumer capitalism based on the concept of the spectacle. In the spectacle, media and consumer society replace lived experience, the passive gaze of images supplants active social participation, and new forms of alienation induce social atomization at a more abstract level than in previous societies. We endeavor to make two theoretical contributions: First, we highlight the contributions of the Situationist International, pointing out how they revised the Marxian categories of alienation, commodification, and reification in order to analyze the dynamics of twentieth century capitalism and to give these concepts new explanatory power. Second, we build a critical theory of consumer capitalism that incorporates the theoretical assumptions and arguments of the Situationists and the Frankfurt School. Today, critical theory can make an important contribution to sociology by critically examining the plurality of spectacles and their reifying manifestations. In addition, critical theorists can explore how different spectacles connect to one another, how they connect to different social institutions, and how spectacles express contradictions and conflicting meanings. A critical theory of spectacle and consumption can disclose both novelties and discontinuities in the current period, as well as continuities in the development of globalized consumer capitalism.

I will suggest two things about propaganda: First, that the propaganda campaign was successful because of “new propaganda” akin to “public diplomacy” that was used “against” other countries, but it was turned on citizens of the United States; Second, that propaganda narratives both “pro” and “con” – in our case, the Bush Administration and an opposing view such as 9/11 Truth – not only distort reality, but are being shaped by new information technologies, for example, videos and the Internet, which play off members’ experience with popular culture and entertainment media, on the one hand, while, on the other hand, promoting sub-plots that reaffirm the dominant narrative and counter-narrative. Missing, as usual, is the sociological narrative, about how reality gets constructed through symbolic meanings that are routinized and flow into the culture stream of myth and “what everyone knows.” I will try to tell that, too.

1. Innovative technologies, such as DS, can engage different human senses and play an important role in enhancing the store atmosphere.

2. The majority of DS networks feature content that is generic and is rarely tailored to the audience passing by the screens. As a result, digital displays are often ignored.

3. DS coupled with sensors and Artificial Intelligence allow for more relevant and personalized experiences.

4. Relevance through personalization can help retailers overcome display blindness, but challenges in terms of legal restrictions and ethical concerns exist to unlock its potential.

5. Nontouch interaction technologies, such as voice assistants, gesture controls, facial recognition, and augmented reality, present new ways of interacting with digital screens.

Innovative technologies, such as DS, can engage different human senses and play an important role in enhancing the store atmosphere.

The majority of DS networks feature content that is generic and is rarely tailored to the audience passing by the screens. As a result, digital displays are often ignored.

DS coupled with sensors and Artificial Intelligence allow for more relevant and personalized experiences.

Relevance through personalization can help retailers overcome display blindness, but challenges in terms of legal restrictions and ethical concerns exist to unlock its potential.

Nontouch interaction technologies, such as voice assistants, gesture controls, facial recognition, and augmented reality, present new ways of interacting with digital screens.