Product placement and the promotion of healthy food to pre-adolescents

Although many scholars have raised concerns about product placement directed at children, the practice may offer interesting outcomes when used for pro-social objectives. This study investigates the effectiveness of placements promoting the consumption of fruits and vegetables. Specifically, the modality (audio-visual vs. visual) of placements is studied. The role of referent others on children’s attitude towards healthy eaters and the target’s intentions to consume healthy food is also examined. Challenging previous findings on commercial placements in video games, our experiment on 72 subjects show that audio-visual (or bimodal) placements are of greater effectiveness than the unimodal ones when unbranded goods and passive media such as TV shows are considered. Then, the central role of the attitude towards healthy eaters is demonstrated, stressing the importance of referent others and value-expressive norms in the persuasion process. Managerial implications for public services and screenwriters of popular TV programmes are discussed, as are limitations and directions for further research.