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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 purpose of this paper is to represent the first empirical investigation of co-branding strategies whose target is children. It analyses such strategies’ potential in the context of brand extension for non-familiar brands combined with familiar ones and provides managerial implications for both brands.

A leisure centre-based survey was used to collect information on children’s attitudes, evaluations of fit and consumption intentions of co-branded products.

The findings confirm that co-branding strategies may have a very positive impact on attitudes towards partner brands, intentions to consume co-branded products and the host brand. They also indicate that consumption intentions for other products from the host product category are enhanced. From a theoretical perspective, the study stresses the essential mediating role of brand fit. Indeed, this construct appears to enable preadolescents to integrate simultaneous evaluations of two brands while constructing their attitudes towards one product. The asymmetric spill-over effect is also confirmed, with the non-familiar (weaker) brand benefiting more from the co-branding than the familiar (strong) brand.

The main limitations pertain to the small sample size and the absence of direct behavioural measures that could be added through later research. It would also be interesting to study further the concept of fit and the nature of the underlying mediating process (cognitive vs affective) among the target audience, as well as to analyse the impact of the various types of co-branding (functional vs symbolic).

The derived guidelines suggest how non-familiar brands to the pre-adolescent target (including retailers’ brand) may expand their businesses through successful alliances with a more familiar brand that is viewed favourably.

In this study, concerns were high to select a co-branded product that does not harm children’s health, to the contrary (vegetable soup with cheese). The results demonstrate that the tactic may increase the target’s intentions to eat products that it would not necessarily fancy (as often the case for healthy products) while contributing to the positive development of economic actors. In this, the paper shows that economic interests should not always be opposed to social welfare.

This study investigates the very popular strategy of brand alliance among an original target (eight-to 12-year-olds) and identifies the original process through which preadolescents appraise two brands that endorse one product, a unique marketing context. This represents an important starting point to further studies on brand alliances.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of recalling visual and child-oriented product packaging elements vs informational content on children’s influence on household purchases.

The study was conducted using quantitative research among 100 French consumers of breakfast cereals aged six to 11.

The paper challenges previous findings. First, the recall of the various types of packaging elements was equivalent across age groups. Second, the impact of visual and child-oriented element recall on purchase influences was high, especially for younger children, but not superior to the impact of recalling informational packaging elements. Third, adding information and other elements to visuals reduced young children’s intentions to influence purchases, suggesting that the overload – not the nature – of elements has a negative impact. Fourth, packaging recall seemed weakly related to purchase influence – at least for well-known brands.

Further research on larger samples will allow to encompass potential moderators such as brand context, consumer context and packaging stimulus. Research should also compare the positive (reassuring) influence of adding informational elements on mothers to the negative one it has on children’s influence.

These findings can be used to wisely plan retailers’ packaging strategy. But all in all, retail packaging represents only one of the many factors which impact upon children’s diet and food consumptions and should be reassessed in the face other influences.

The findings challenge and expand one’s knowledge on the relationship between children and the relative influence of child-oriented elements and information, across age groups.