Audience Engagement and its Effects on Product Placement Recognition

This article explores the feasibility of examining, via self-reported measures, the relationship between audiences’ perceptions of the quality of their cognitive and emotional engagement with an entertainment piece and the memory trace created by a product placement. This field-based quasi-experiment uses a within-subject design and targets teenagers. Although limited by the viability of available, wholly suitable measurement scales, this exploratory study finds that audience engagement (which consists of pleasure, arousal, and cognitive effort) and star liking can be measured by self-reports after consumers watch a movie and that star liking, cognitive effort, and pleasure affect recognition for product placements.