Abstract
To what extent are television viewers affected by the behaviors and decisions they see modeled by characters in television soap operas? Collaborating with scriptwriters for three prime-time nationally-broadcast Spanish-language telenovelas, we embedded scenes about topics such as drunk driving or saving money at randomly assigned periods during the broadcast season. Outcomes were measured unobtrusively by aggregate city- and nation-wide time series, such as the number of Hispanic motorists arrested daily for drunk driving or the number of accounts opened in banks located in Hispanic neighborhoods. Results indicate that while two of the treatment effects are statistically significant, none are substantively large or long-lasting. Actions that could be taken during the immediate viewing session, like online searching, and those that were relatively more integrated into the telenovela storyline, specifically reducing cholesterol, were briefly affected, but not behaviors requiring sustained efforts, like opening a bank account or registering to vote.
Highlights
Commercial product placement, defined as “insertion of branded products or services into mass media content with the intent of influencing consumer attitude or behavior” [1], is widely believed to affect audiences’ purchasing behavior
Evidence suggesting the influence of product placement comes from four sources: (i) examples of placement’s effects on consumer demand for which there is no ready alternative explanation, such as the surge in the popularity of the Pottery Barn brand after it appeared in an episode of the television series Friends in the 1990s [2], (ii) the enormous fees that companies are willing to pay to have their products featured in films and television shows [3], (iii) observational studies that find a strong correlation between media exposure to products and preferences for those
Absent from this list are field experiments showing that demand increases in the wake of randomly assigned, naturalistic exposure to product placements in mass media, such studies may have been conducted by commercial entities and exist outside the public domain
Summary
Commercial product placement, defined as “insertion of branded products or services into mass media content with the intent of influencing consumer attitude or behavior” [1], is widely believed to affect audiences’ purchasing behavior. Television Product Placement Effects on Behavior products [4], and (iv) laboratory experiments conducted under controlled conditions that demonstrate how awareness and evaluations of products rise when they appear in a television program or film [5]. Absent from this list are field experiments showing that demand increases in the wake of randomly assigned, naturalistic exposure to product placements in mass media, such studies may have been conducted by commercial entities and exist outside the public domain. Elaboration likelihood theories of cognitive processing contend that viewers are especially susceptible to the influence of products and messages that are unobtrusively woven into plotlines because these subtle forms of influence do not provoke counter-arguing, especially when viewers are engrossed by the story and its characters [9,10,11]
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