Brands in texts: attitudinal effects of brand placements in narrative fiction

Abstract

Brand placements have become popular as an alternative brand communication tool for many companies. Previous research on brand placements has mainly considered the communication effects of brands placed in television programmes, films and computer games. To our knowledge, only one recently published article has looked into brand placements in narrative fiction. Hence, the current article is among the first papers to study the effects of brand placements in narrative fiction, and among the first papers to investigate consumers’ attitudes towards such placements. The basic proposition is that brand prominence (high plot integration versus low plot integration) is positively related to favourable attitudes towards the brand. Additionally, we propose that plot integration interacts with reader involvement in the text, thereby increasing the importance of visible and dominant brands placed in the text for high-involvement consumers. An experiment manipulating plot integration and reader involvement supports our proposed main and interaction effects.