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While product placements, advertising efforts designed to reach a company’s targ

ID: 337785 • Letter: W

Question

While product placements, advertising efforts designed to reach a company’s target market by strategically placing the product within media, are widely used, there can be drawbacks to this practice. One problem is that marketers have a lack of control over how their products are portrayed in the storyline, scene, event, etc. Products “may end up being misused, ignored, criticized, associated with questionable values, or used unethically (Williams, Petrosky, Hernandez, Page, 2011, p. 16). Secondly, if there are too many products in a scene then product saturation occurs and it can have a negative effect on consumers. Thirdly, a product may be negatively associated with a particular character. If the character falls into ill repute within the media content, then the product or brand suffers as well.

Think about your exposure to product placement (see definition, Ch 16). Come up with examples from past TV series, video games, movies, televised sporting events, etc., that might exemplify one or two of the above drawbacks. As a consumer what was your reaction these advertising situations?

Explanation / Answer

While product placements, advertising efforts designed to reach a company’s target market by strategically placing the product within media, are widely used, there can be drawbacks to this practice. One problem is that marketers have a lack of control over how their products are portrayed in the storyline, scene, event, etc. Products “may end up being misused, ignored, criticized, associated with questionable values, or used unethically (Williams, Petrosky, Hernandez, Page, 2011, p. 16). Secondly, if there are too many products in a scene then product saturation occurs and it can have a negative effect on consumers. Thirdly, a product may be negatively associated with a particular character. If the character falls into ill repute within the media content, then the product or brand suffers as well.

Think about your exposure to product placement (see definition, Ch 16). Come up with examples from past TV series, video games, movies, televised sporting events, etc., that might exemplify one or two of the above drawbacks. As a consumer what was your reaction these advertising situations?