Social Influence in Product Placements: The Impact of Group Composition and Coviewing Context on Brand Recall and Attitudes

Abstract

People often consume marketing messages in social settings (Ramanathan and McGill 2007). Social contexts impact individuals’ attitudes, evaluations, and/or judgments toward media content and/or characters (Lin and McDonald 2007). However, there is a paucity of research on social influence for a socially consumed form of marketing communication whose importance to marketers is growing, i.e., product placement. This research gap is significant because product placements are usually embedded in movie, television (Balasubramanian 1994) or mass media programming (Karrh 1998) that represent entertainment options where the viewing experience is often shared. In response, our study examines how social influence is shaped by group characteristics and coviewing contexts for product placements.