Product placement and the credibility of television journalism. An RTR-supported experiment on the relationship between 
product placement, expert statements, and viewer perceptions in consumer-advice programs

Thomas Roessing; Nikolaus Jackob; Karl N. Renner

doi:10.1515/commun-2016-0002

Article

Product placement and the credibility of television journalism. An RTR-supported experiment on the relationship between product placement, expert statements, and viewer perceptions in consumer-advice programs

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Published/Copyright: July 2, 2016

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From the journal Communications Volume 41 Issue 2

Abstract

Embedding a product or a brand into journalistic content may have a negative impact on how the content’s credibility is perceived by recipients. However, research has not been able to convincingly prove that product placement has an effect on how recipients perceive and evaluate media content. This particularly applies to context effects, such as the effect that the number of visible products or brands has on the perceived credibility of the journalistic content the placement is embedded in. This study addresses two questions: whether the use of visible products or brands embedded in journalistic content influences the credibility that recipients attribute to such content, and how the tenor of the content, positive or negative, interacts with the placed products. Based on experimental findings and real-time response measurements, we conclude that the number of visible products does not significantly affect the credibility attributed to journalistic content and that judgments about credibility are influenced by the interaction between the number of products placed and the tenor of the content.

Keywords: product placement; advertising effects; media effects; experimental research; real-time response measurement

Published Online: 2016-7-2

Published in Print: 2016-7-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2016-0002

Keywords for this article

product placement; advertising effects; media effects; experimental research; real-time response measurement