Two studies of luxury product placement in a movie examine whether luxury placements increase movie viewers’ purchase intentions when backgrounds are congruent with the product’s luxury image (a message factor) and when the audience’s luxury associations are activated at the moment (an audience factor). In Study 1, participants’ luxury associations are implicitly activated by priming them with perceptions that they are members of high or low social classes. In Study 2, to explicitly activate their luxury associations, some participants read a news article that describes the placed luxury product as a genuine high-end product; others read an article that describes the placed luxury product as a discount brand. Both studies demonstrate the effects of product–environment congruence and luxury associations on consumer purchase intention.

This research examines the effect of luxury brand's logo on disparity between explicit and implicit attitudes. Using implicit association test, the results show that there is no correlation between implicit attitude and explicit attitude towrd a luxury product when luxury brand's logo is present (i.e., Prada). In contrast, implicit attitude and explicit attitude are negatively correlated when luxury logo is absent (i.e., Bottega Veneta).