2018 Volume 2 Issue 1 Pages 25-35
This study examines the impact of celebrity endorsements on the effectiveness of product placement. Celebrity endorsements and product placement appear in a multitude of media in consumers’ daily lives, and this phenomenon has increasingly raised the interest among researchers and practitioners. Therefore, this study explores the following two kinds of normative influence in the context of product placement: (a) parasocial interaction with a celebrity and (b) social interaction by means of peer communication among consumers on attitudes toward a placed brand. In addition, it examines the effect of plot connection, which refers to the way the placed brand is exposed in a scene. Finally, it tests how the message variables, plot connection and strength between celebrity and placed brand, moderate the parasocial interaction’s effect on attitude toward brands. This study tests these effects by conducting a hierarchical regression with survey data from a sample of Japanese consumers. It concludes with theoretical contributions and the direction of future research.
