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Introduction
Today consumers are increasingly concerned about different marketing practices. Product placement, also known as brand placement (e.g. Karrh, 1998; Nelson and Deshpande, 2013), serves as an alternative way for advertisers to reach consumers and has been increasingly utilized in marketing communication. Product placement refers to the planned integration of branded products into media content with an aim to influence audiences (Balasubramanian, 1994). It is a rapidly growing promotional tool in different media outlets, especially films. In 2012, global spending on film product placement totaled $1.66 billion, growing by 8.1 percent compared to the previous year (PQ Media, 2013). More than 1,000 brands from the USA use product placement as part of their marketing mix (Russell and Stern, 2006). Large budgets are allocated to placing brands in films to reach global consumers.
A review of product placement literature shows that the effects of product placement are inconsistent (Balasubramanian et al., 2006; Chan, 2012). Van Reijmersdal et al. (2009, p. 440) claimed that “a substantial part of [the] effects of brand placement is still unknown.” The dynamic nature of product placement suggests that a number of variables may shape the effectiveness of the practice. The effect of placement prominence (i.e. the visibility of the product placement to viewers) has been found to be inconsistent while brand awareness has seldom been examined or controlled. The existing literature has not disentangled the effect of culture on placement effectiveness though the interactions between culture and advertising appeals have been documented (Chan et al. 2015; Okazaki et al., 2010; Terlutter et al., 2010). As suggested by Gould et al. (2000, p. 54), films “may well extend across countries in both physical and meaning transfer, but the placements in them may not carry the same quantity or quality of meaning transfer.” Although some research has begun to explore product placement effects across cultures in terms of acceptability and ethical concerns (e.g. Eisend, 2009; Gupta and Gould, 1997; Karrh et al., 2001; Lee et al., 2011; McKechnie and Zhou, 2003), research has yet to understand how consumers across cultures process and react to the same product placement. Kureshi and Sood (2010) content analyzed 62 research articles on product placement and reached a similar conclusion. This leads...