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Literature Survey 25<br />

However, one must distinguish product placement in video games from advergames.<br />

In the case of product placement, the video game exists not because of the<br />

product placement: the brand is just a part of experience of the game. Advergames<br />

however, are created for the purpose of promoting the brand. Advergames have the<br />

advantage that they can include brand interactivity, higher traffic and the ability to<br />

obtain market information through the character selected and the psychographic<br />

and demographic information about the gamer.<br />

Finally, novels are also known to contain product placement though it is difficult<br />

to assess to which extent these placements are commercial in nature (Brennan,<br />

2008). In certain cases, the author is known to have received a financial compensation<br />

for including a brand in the story. Fay Weldon indicated having received a fee<br />

from the brand Bulgari to include its product in the novel The Bulgari Connection. It<br />

is claimed that such practice is on the rise (Lehu, 2007).<br />

Other than the types of media available to product placement, a company<br />

needs to make choices regarding the way the message is encoded into the product<br />

placement.<br />

3.2.4 Product placement types<br />

There are several ways how to define types of product placement. As will be shown<br />

below, the various definitions of these types contain quite some similarities among<br />

each other. A first way to categorize product placements is through how the brand<br />

is being communicated, the modality of the message (Kardes, 1999): visually, verbal<br />

or a combination of these two (Karrh, 2003). A more specific description of these<br />

product placement types are screen placements visually presenting the brand in<br />

the background, script placements mentioning the brand verbally and plot placements<br />

where the brand is an actual part of the storyline (Russell, 1998). A similar<br />

description of such types are background, concerning placements shown with the<br />

character but lacking interaction between brand and the character, used by character<br />

where the character does interact with the product and story connection where<br />

the brand is an active component of the storyline (Yang and Roskos-Ewoldsen,<br />

2007). Such differences in types of stimuli can have an impact on the level of involvement<br />

and learning process among consumers. In this regard, product placement<br />

types as described previously respectively represent lower and higher levels of involvement.<br />

Low-level involvement product placement is expected to be insufficient<br />

to result in changes in persuasion or attitude, despite its ability to overcome a resistant<br />

attitude, and merely reinforce existing attitudes over time through repetition<br />

(Krugman, 1965). Message source characteristics as previously described, carried<br />

by the endorser, are particularly important when the source is highlighted (Andreoli<br />

and Worchel, 1978, Kardes, 1999), which is common for television, a medium using<br />

product placement. In particular, in terms of message modality, the source attractiveness<br />

is important for audiovisual or audio-only media whereas it is not important<br />

for a written medium (Chaiken and Eagly, 1983). This will be further on<br />

elaborated when describing the endorsement process.<br />

Another categorization of product placement can be based on the nature of<br />

the information being transferred (Gupta and Lord, 1998): visual only (VIS), audio

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