Product placement specifici e generici: impatto sull’audience e implicazioni per la costruzione delle politiche di branding

Product placement has been attracting attention in recent years due to marketers seeking new tools to reach consumers that have become more emancipated due to the development of adskipping technologies like TiVo which helps audiences skip commercial messages. Nevertheless not much work has been done in exploring and testing the real efficacy of product placement as a marketing communication tool. We explore the distinction between generic and specific product placement in influencing consumers in the context of product placement in movies. We focus on brand recognition (cognitive) which is most widely used to assess the efficacy of product placement investments and in this context we formalize our hypotheses. In particular we discover cases of miscomprehension and misattribution in elaborating placement messages by the audience that can have important consequences. In the end we discuss our findings and point out some managerial implications for marketers.