Consumers, Characters, and Products

Abstract

This study examines the influence of product placements in television serial comedies on consumer attitudes toward the products. Proposing a "Balance Model of Sitcom Product Placement Effects," the study integrates gente theory to analyze chatacter-product associations in sitcoms, patasocial theory to consider consumer-chatactet referential relations, and balance theory to address the main teseatch issue of the way that charactets' relations to placed ptoducts and consumets' relations to the charactets affect consumers' attitudes to the products. The model is based on balance theory, in which attitude alignment is the explanation fot links between a triad composed of the consumet, the sitcom character, and the placed product. The influence of two consumer-chatactet vatiables (attitude and parasocial attachment) and two charactetptoduct vatiables (valence and sttength of association) ate tested in a teal-wotld situation. The methodology uses teal televised sitcoms as stimuli, real viewers as respondents, and a real-time on-line survey to measure the relationship among the variables. Study findings support the predictions that consumers align their attitudes toward products with the characters' attitudes to products and that this process is driven by the consumers' attachment to the characters.