Product Placement in Mass Media: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive and systematic review of the product placement literature in order to map the thematic development of product placement research, help researchers understand the current research status, and suggest directions for future research. A pool of 874 publications related to product placement in mass media was retrieved from the Web of Science, Scopus, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar databases. Bibliometric and network analyses were used to identify the leading journals, scholars, and publications to capture information about emerging issues and to map the development of product placement research. Three major clusters of product placement research were identified: (1) basic concepts, fundamental research frameworks, and empirical studies on product placement in movies and television programs; (2) empirical studies on product placement in games, especially focusing on children and food product placements; and (3) empirical studies on the effects and underlying mechanisms of product placement disclosures. This article concludes by suggesting a future research agenda for product placement research.