Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 6, Issue 4 - January 2005

The Effects of Arousal on Brand Recall of Product Placement in Movies: Exploring the Relationship Between Low, Medium and High Arousal Levels and Brand Recall, Product Placement Opinions and Purchase Intentions

Jodi Berman

ABSTRACT

The role of arousal in brand recall of product placement in mass media is little understood. Few studies have attempted to find any relation between levels of arousal and brand recall. In this exploratory study, we show that moderate levels of arousal create greater brand recall. We also show that moderate levels of arousal, as opposed to high or low levels, create positive opinions of product placement and increase purchase intentions of the brands placed within the medium. Marketing managers can use this research to make educated and profitable decisions regarding product placement.

INTRODUCTION

The large increase in sales of Reese's Pieces candy due to successful product placement in the 1982 movie “ET” sparked the interest of marketers and advertisers worldwide. ET, the Extra Terrestrial was seen holding Reeses Pieces Candy, and brand sales increased by 65% in three months (Morton & Friedman 2001). In “Austin Powers in GoldMember,” Powers arrives in a “Shaguar,” a Jaguar XK8, and sales nearly doubled (Business Source Premiere, 2002). Product Placement is chosen strategically and seeks to gain brand awareness, recall and trial. In “Back to the Future,” Michael J. Fox orders a Pepsi. In “Top Gun,” Tom Cruise wears Ray Ban Sunglasses. In “Pretty Woman”, Richard Gere wears a Ceretti Suit. These products do not appear in these scenes by accident.
Product placement is a “paid product message aimed at influencing movie (or TV) audiences via the planned and unobtrusive entry of a branded product into a movie (or TV program)” (Balasumbramanian, 1994). Transferring a message from a medium to the target audience has become increasingly more difficult due to many factors. There is a ubiquitous dislike of advertising on TV (Alwitt & Prabhaker, 1994), viewers avoid TV ads by zipping and zapping (Olney, Holbrook, & Batra, 1991), and TV audience fragmentation and TV clutter (Lawerence 1989). Therefore, marketers have discovered a new means of communication through product placement in movies.

According to Gupta and Lord (1998), individuals watch movies with the objective of obtaining some cognitive, sensory or emotional stimulation. Therefore, the brand that appears within the movie enjoys a heightened level of processing. Furthermore, the product placement in movies receives a higher processing motivation on the part of the viewers due to intentional exposure. AC Neilsen Research 1999 shows that product placement increases brand loyalty by validating the purchase decisions of the consumer. A few years ago, generic products were used within media as props. For example, a can labeled “soda” would appear on a kitchen table as opposed to a “Pepsi.” Today, consumers are paying an average of over $10 to see a movie, and they expect real products whose contributions to a scene make sense.

Apple computer company that has aggressively applied product placement techniques for its products. Computers have been included in movies almost since the computer was invented. Until recently, computers have been used as a negative, villain-like character within movies. For example, in the 1976 movie “Logan’s Run,” a computer takes over a city and decides that everyone must die before age 30. Now, however, computers are seen favorably in many movies. Apple computers have been in more than 1500 movies and TV shows. Some examples are “Seinfeld,” “Northern Exposure,” “Home Improvement,” “You’ve Got Mail,” “Stepmom,” “Office Space,” “Friends,” “Melrose Place,” and “Enemy of the State.” In 1996, Apple was placed in three high profile movies: “Mission Impossible,” “Independence Day,” and “Ransom” (Forlenza, 2004). This study will use Apple computer, a well-known product seen regularly on the big screen, to test the effects of arousal and pleasure on brand recall and attitudes of product placement.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRODUCT PLACEMENT, AROUSAL LEVELS AND BRAND RECALL

A number of studies have attempted to find a relationship between arousal levels and brand recall of a product placed in a scene. Product placement has switched from a practice that helped make scenes more authentic to a successful tool in product promotion. Previous research shows that product placement can impact brand recognition, recall, and attitudes. (Babin & Carder, 1996; Brennen, Dubas & Babin, 1999; Karrh, Frith, & Callison, 2001; Gibson & Maurer, 2000; Gupta, Gould, Grabrer, & Krauter, 2000; Gupta & Lord, 1998; Morton & Friedman, 2002).

Researchers believe that many contextual variables affect brand recall of product placements. Previous research tested positive and negative valence levels, high and low arousal levels, positive and negative emotional states, and prominent and subtle placements. Other research explains the link between product placement and brand trial. In a study by Shapiro, MacInnis, and Park (2002), arousal and valence dimensions of mood differentially affect ad processing, with arousal affecting level of processing and valence affecting nature of processing. In a study by Gupta and Lord in 1998, prominent product placements elicited higher recall than subtle placement. In a study by Morton and Friedman (2002), research showed that the way a product is portrayed within a movie may be useful in predicting product usage behavior.

HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

Arousal is usually defined as the level of the mental activity elicited by a stimulus (Mehrabian, 1998). Many researchers in consumer behavior agree on the relationship between arousal and other variables. For example, using an econometric approach, Kaufmann (1999) postulates that arousal and a variable-like performance or liking resembles an inverted U. This curve implies that there is an optimal level of arousal where performance and attitudes are at the summit. That is, low levels of arousal imply boredom while very high arousal might be regarded as an overwhelming experience.

Since the arousal of a stimulus, in this study a movie in which a product is placed, can influence the effects and image of product placement, the following hypotheses are proposed:

Hypothesis 1: Subjects who expressed moderate levels of arousal will recall more the brand of the product placement than the subjects who expressed high or low levels of arousal.

Hypothesis 2: Subjects who expressed moderate levels of arousal will have a more positive opinion of product placement than the subjects who expressed high or low levels of arousal.

Hypothesis 3: Subjects who expressed moderate levels of arousal will have higher levels of purchase intention for the brand of the product placement than the subjects who expressed high or low levels of arousal.

METHODOLOGY

The hypotheses developed for this research were tested applying an experimental design that manipulated arousal at two different levels (high and low). Arousal was manipulated by selecting two movies that were as different as possible in terms of arousal elicitation. However, both had an Apple computer predominantly placed in their scenes.

Experimental Stimuli

The first step in the research process was to test arousal, pleasure, and dominance levels in four different scenes from four different movies. A questionnaire instrument was created to identify relationships between arousal, pleasure and/or brand recall of product placement. Each scene that was tested used Apple Computers as product placement. The four movies were “How To Lose A Guy in Ten Days,” “Austin Powers in GoldMember,” “Legally Blonde” and “Zoolander.”

The scene from “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days” appears at the beginning of the movie when Kate Hudson is sitting at her computer at work. The scene in “GoldMember” occurs when Dr. Evil and Mini Me are singing “It’s a Hard-Knock Life” in jail and the scene ends with Austin Powers and Beyonce on the Apple computer. The scene in “Legally Blonde” appears when Reese Witherspoon is invited to attend a fake costume party at Harvard and decides to get serious about her studies by buying an Apple computer. The scene in “Zoolander” occurs when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson disguise themselves to hack into the Apple computer before the big show.

We conducted a pretest with a sample of 20 college-aged students to test the levels of arousal in each scene. The goal was to pick the scene with the highest and the lowest levels of arousal to use in the exploratory study. Arousal was measured on a six-item, seven-point scale from the Marketing Scales Handbook, Volume II. The higher the number, the higher the arousal. The results of the pretest are as follows:

After choosing “Legally Blonde” to use as the scene with low levels of arousal and “Austin Powers” “Goldmember” as the scene with high levels of arousal, more research was conducted. This study attempted to find a relationship between arousal and pleasure levels and brand recall. We also tested for general beliefs about product placement in movies.

Sample Selection and Pretest

Primary research was conducted with college-aged students 18-24 years of age who attend the University of Florida, a target market that watches a lot of movies. SMRB data (1991) show that 18-24 year olds watch the most movies in theaters of any age bracket, ranging from 20-36 movies a year. More than half also rent movies regularly.

A total of 80 participants were recruited for an initial test of arousal levels within four scenes. They were asked to watch a 5-8 minute clip of a movie and fill out a questionnaire about arousal, pleasure and dominance. The questionnaire took approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.

After we chose the scenes with the highest and lowest levels of arousal, 50 new participants were chosen from a beginning advertising class to test brand recall of product placement and retest arousal levels. They were asked to watch a 5-8 minute clip of a movie and answer questions about arousal, pleasure and brand recall. The questionnaire took approximately 15 minutes to complete.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Of the participants who watched the scenes from “Austin Powers Goldmember” was: 32% male (n=8) and 68% female (n=17); 8% were married (n=2) and 92% were single (n=23); 44% were Juniors in College (n=11) and 56% were seniors in college (n=14); and 80% were Caucasian/White (n=20), 8% were Hispanic/Latino (n=2), 8% were Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander (n=2) and 4% were African American (n=1). Of the participants who watched “Legally Blonde” 48% were male (n=12) and 52% were female (n=13); 100% were single (n=25); 4% were freshman in college (n=1), 12% were sophomores (n=3), 56% were Juniors (n=14) and 28% were Seniors (n=7); 84% were Caucasian/White (n=21), 8% were Hispanic/Latino, and 8% wereAsian/Asian American/Pacific Islander.

Reliability tests were performed on measuring arousal and pleasure. Arousal was lower than the norm at .6234, and the measure of pleasure was reliable at .7886. Usually, a reliability above .7 is considered reliable.

Arousal was split in three roughly-sized levels to create groups labeled low, moderate, and high arousal. This categorical variable was used in a cross tabulation with the recall measure in order to test hypothesis 1: Subjects who expressed moderate levels of arousal will recall more the brand of the product placement than the subjects who expressed high or low levels of arousal. The results of the cross tabulation (see Table 2) indicate that the relationship between arousal and recall of the Apple placement is significant (Pearson chi-square=0.001). However, event though the analysis was significant the hypothesis was rejected since people who expressed lower levels of arousal were more able to recall Apple’s product placement than the subjects who expressed moderate or high levels of arousal.

Hypothesis 2 forecasts that subjects who expressed moderate levels of arousal will have a more positive opinion of product placement than the subjects who expressed high or low levels of arousal. This hypothesis was tested using an analysis of variance that used arousal as the independent variable and subject’s opinions about product placement as the dependent variable.

The results of the analysis of variance indicate that the image of product placement was slightly significant (F=2.95, df=49, p<0.10). However, the inverted U relationship that was hypothesized was not found. According to the data, higher levels of arousal (M=4.71) are significantly linked to a more positive image of product placement than moderate (M=3.89) or low (M=4.38) levels of arousal.
Hypothesis 3 states that subjects who expressed moderate levels of arousal will have higher levels of purchase intention for the brand of the product placement than the subjects who expressed high or low levels of arousal. This hypothesis was tested with a similar analysis of variance in which the dependent variable was purchase intention. The results of the analysis of variance imply that purchase intention for the product placed in the movie was slightly significant (F=2.3, df=49, p<0.10). The inverted U relationship that was hypothesized was found. Moderate levels of arousal (M=3.45) were associated with higher levels of purchasing intention than at high (M=2.58) or low (M=3.06) levels of arousal.

DISCUSSION

Due to the exploratory nature of this study, we presented several hypotheses that explore the issue of brand recall of product placement and attitudes towards product placement in general with different combinations of arousal and pleasure. This study establishes a foundation for examining the relationship between product placement and arousal, pleasure, and brand recall. The findings of this study suggest that arousal as a single factor does not affect brand recall of product placement. However, with optimal levels of arousal and pleasure mentioned earlier, product placement can be seen as a positive marketing tool. These findings highlight the need for further research. In order for marketing managers to place their products in the most effective scenes (i.e., generate positive attitudes and create brand recall and hopefully trial) more research must be conducted. There were limitations to this study in various aspects. First, the sample of students chosen came from the Journalism department and were all 18-24 years old. Also, because the products were not placed digitally into the extremely similar scenes, other aspects of each scene could have affected brand recall. The scene from “Austin Powers Goldmemeber” had more than just Apple Computers as product placement. Students actually noticed the other products placed within that scene more than the Apple Computer. This finding presents another area of possible research. The cluttered products in the scene could have had an effect on brand recall of Apple Computers. Studies such as these will help marketers make educated decisions when placing their products into mass media.

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REFERENCES

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