When Intrusive Can Be Likable: Product Placement Effects on Multitasking Consumers

Abstract

Using movie scenes, this study examines how multitasking by viewers influences the product-plot integration effect. Findings indicate that multitasking dampens a well-integrated placement's brand-enhancing effect and mitigates an intrusive placement's brand-damaging effect. Well-integrated placement produces an assimilation effect, leading to convergence of viewers' attitudes toward the placed versus competing brands, while intrusive placement triggers a contrast effect that results in divergence of these attitudes. Among single-tasking viewers, the boomerang effect of an intrusive placement decreases the favorability of the placed brand and increases the favorability of the not-shown competitor. The opposite is true among multitasking viewers, however.