Product placement in House of Cards: the effects of mode of presentation and prominence on memory

Abstract

Product placement refers to the inclusion of commercial products in noncommercial settings. Research has typically focuses on attempting to determine what characteristics make a product placement more effective and is often measured by explicit memory of the brands presented. Previous studies have had issues with generalizability due to the lack of an objective and consistent use of an operational definition for factors such as prominence. This study aims at validating a coding system developed by Concave Brand Tracking, which established and operationally defined five levels of visual prominence. This study measures explicit memory for each of the five levels of visual prominence with the hypothesis that, as level of prominence increases the memory of the exposure to the brand would increase as well. The results of the experiment support this hypothesis. The effects of presentation mode (i.e. audio or visual) on memory were also investigated. The hypothesis based on the theory of dual coding was, when a product has both an audio and visual presentation, memory is improved compared to a product placement using a single presentation mode. This hypothesis was also supported by the results of the experiment. Overall this study suggests both mode of presentation and level of prominence have an impact on viewer’s ability to accurately remember exposure to product placement within the Netflix series House of Cards