The success of Marvel movies attracts more companies to place their brands in this series of movies, apparel brand like Under Armour or car manufacturer like BMW has largely used the movie as medium of product placement to increase brand equity. To understand how the product placement in the movie affect consumer attitude and purchase intention is in needed. Neer (2004) states that product placement is a type of marketing by creating impression for consumers unconsciously through incorporation into the plot of TV programs, movies and other media. The conceptual model was built based on the Russell’s (2002) tripartite typology of product placement and social comparison theory. We presume brand-self congruity, placement explicitness, plot connection, and attitude toward the plot and role are positively related to brand attitude and purchase intention. The research employed experiment with a 2 (placement explicitness: prominent/subtle) x 2 (plot connection: main character/supporting role) between subject design. The research theme is under the Under Armour because the brand used product placement as the company’s major marketing communication process of move placement. The research result shows that the more the product placement is identifiable in the movies, with frequent usage or appearance in main plot, the better the placement effect is; the preference of consumers on movies, including plot and role attitude, explicitly influences placement effect. If the real self or ideal self of consumers are consistent with brand image, a higher brand attitude and purchase intention will occur. To best of our knowledge, our paper is first one using self-congruity and attitude toward the plot to investigate the outcome of product placement in the movies. The research concludes with implications for promotion strategy to advance brand image and purchase intention by increasing the effectiveness of product placement. Future research suggestions relevant to the product placement issues, marketing communication and brand management are also provided.

A factorial design 2 (high repetition vs low repetition) x 2 (high brand familiarity vs low brand familiarity) is used to test the effects of repetition and brand familiarity on consumers’ memory for brands placed in video games. Consumers recalled better familiar brands and repetition increased recall for familiar brands.

Brand placements, by providing endorsement opportunities for the placed brands, are becoming instrumental in influencing the buying behaviour of ad-savvy consumers. As this marketing tool gains momentum, with the regulatory barriers against the placement beginning to obliterate globally, product placement strategies such as TV placements have become an important choice for practitioners (PQ media 2012). Brand placements are unique in their capacity to include brands as verbal, visual or both, often, as a part of the plotline-the latter has been acknowledged as important factor in influencing placement effectiveness (Russell, 2002; Waiguny, Nelson and Marko, 2013). Within TV shows and movies, plot modality entails pairing of the brands with desirable characters (Karrh 1998) and embedding them in an emotive story. Emotions have been known to play an important role in the consumer information processing (Lau-Gesk and Meyers-Levy 2009). Studies exploring the memory effects largely rely on measures such as recognition or recall. However, if brand placements operate less consciously, explicit measures may be inadequate and implicit measures for memory become desirous (Yang, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Dinu and Arpan, 2006). This study examines the impact of positive emotions (Happiness, Interest) and degree of plot modality (character-brand integration) on consumers' implicit attitudes towards placed brands. In the experiments conducted, it was observed that participants exposed to placement sequences evoking positive emotions were more likely to form favourable implicit attitudes towards the placed brands, especially when the character interaction with the placed brand was low. The findings underscore the need to better understand the interplay of positive emotions and character-brands integration within placements to augment their effectiveness.

In 2015, the movie “Northern Limit Line” which based on the naval battle of South and North Korea occurred in 2002 was premiered (Los Angeles Times, 2016). This movie made a significant contribution to improve the image of the R.O.K Navy. Brand Placement (BPL) was used to promote the R.O.K Navy in this movie (Karrh, 1994; Van Reijmersdal, Neijens & Smit, 2007). The R.O.K. Navy is trying to build powerful naval forces with the slogan called “The Ocean Navy”. It is essential to acquire the elite military forces who can help the Korean Navy to accomplish its strategic goal and heighten the competitiveness. The acquired elite military forces are expected to demonstrate their own ability while they serve the R.O.K. Navy. They will have positive influences to the local communities as the supporters of the R.O.K. Navy after they are discharged. This research analyzed BPL effect in terms the recruitment of workforce. This research identified the relationship among BPL, organization image, organization reputation, employment brand equity and intention to pursue job opportunity in R.O.K Navy. In previous researches, the effect of image can be applied to corporate brands, product, individual brands, geographical areas, events and people (Balmer, 1997). The image of organization can remind people of the particular organization (Cable & Yu, 2006). The reputation is a dynamic interaction construct with the image, and defined as a subjective judgment based on the reliability and integrity about the organization in long term (Clardy, 2012). Employment brand equity is defined as outcome of applicant’s decision choices attributable to job seeker’s beliefs about the organization as employer(Han & Collins, 2002). Marketing literatures on employment brand equity can be useful in helping to understand how job seeker develops beliefs about organization as employer. Although many researches studied BPL, organization image and reputation, employment brand equity, etc., little researches have been conducted to integrate the variables mentioned above in public sector such as the military forces. Samples of this research consist of people who watched the movie called “Northern Limit Line”. SPSS and AMOS package programs are employed to analyze the data. Marketing strategy for a public sector such as Korean Navy based upon the results of the findings from this study is expected to position Korean Navy as more efficient and effective organization to recruit better quality human resources.

In the years 2010–2012 in Italy, the 3F sectors, fashion, food and furniture, marked a +5% (FinanciaLounge, 2014). To some extent, this rise may rely on the strong Made in Italy label that is historically “perceived by consumers as being associated with “true” luxury goods” (Hoffmann & Coste-Manière, 2014) and, in order to create nostalgia and credibility for their brands, many firms try to correlate their offer to the heritage of the Country of Origin (Fionda & Moore, 2009). In the academic literature, Country of Origin is one of the most analyzed method to enhance a firm’s competitive advantage, mainly thanks to its ability to increase positive perceptions about firms’ products in the customers’ mind (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1999; Aiello et al., 2009). Moreover, Country of Origin is defined as “the effect rooted in consumers’ images of the quality of specific products marketed by firms associated with a country of origin” (Verlegh, Steenkamp, & Meulenberg, 2005, p. 127). COO works as an information cue that covers the attitudes toward the products evaluation. In particular, COO influences customers’ brand awareness, perceived quality and brand associations depending on the country image, and, as a consequence, the overall brand equity (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1999; Chao, 1998; Magnusson, Westjohn, & Zdravkovic, 2011). For instance, some authors showed a positive bias (i.e. increased willingness to pay a higher price) toward products from some countries relative to others (Drozdenko & Jensen, 2009). For this reason, just few countries can benefit from their image and awareness in order to take advantage from the Country of Origin effect, such as Italy. Furthermore, besides the Country image, scholars found that the COO effect can vary depending on the product category “For a given category, country-of-origin credibility is high when consumers have a favorable image of the country’s products in that category, and low when the product–country image is unfavorable” (Verlegh et al., 2005, p. 129). In this perspective, firms should identify solutions to convey positive associations about their supply to customers (Phau & Leng, 2008). The relevance of this issue is confirmed by a lot of studies, where some communication tools related to COO effect are already investigated, like brand identification system, packaging, advertising copy and celebrity endorsement (Agrawal & Kamakura, 1999; Usunier, 2011). Actually, a lot of Italian firms use product placement exploiting the “Made in Italy” effect, where placement is here intended as the paid inclusion of branded products within mass media programming (Karrh, 1998). Just few examples are Piaggio with Vespa in Roman Holiday, Bacardi with Martini in James Bond and Ocean’s series, Riva Yacht with Aquarama in James Bond series and The Great Beauty, and Prada in The devil wears Prada. Many reasons are explaining such a great use of product placement. On one hand, in the last decade we have assisted to the fragmentation of media and their audience, and on the other one, consumers are more and more skeptical towards traditional benefit advertising and they use technology to avoid commercials (Hackley & Tiwsakul, 2006; Lehu & Bressoud, 2009). Integrating brands casually but notably in a media content appears to be an interesting alternative to traditional marketing communication tools (D’Astous & Chartier, 2000). Furthermore, product placement’s acceptance and its possibly effectiveness, as well as country of origin effect, is likely to vary across product category (Gupta & Gould, 1997; Russell, 1998). Moreover, we can assume that product placement impact on the overall brand equity in a positive way (Aaker, 1997; Miniero, Chizzoli, & Pate, 2013) as it is an effective tool that can increase brand awareness and develop favorable relations with customers (Chan, 2012). In particular, studies on product placement confirm an increased top-of-mind-awareness and unaided awareness of placed brands (Cholinski, 2012). Finally, even if studies on product integration effect on attitude toward placed brands are not univocal, a lot of publications present positive or at the very least neutral product placement influence on brand attitude (Russell, 2002). For instance, according to Miniero et al. (2013), product placement is a nice way to achieve communication objectives and it can be used to influence consumers’ attitude and intention to buy a specific brand (Miniero et al., 2013). To our knowledge, despite a huge employment of product placement in practice and a lot of contributions in the academic theory about these two topics, there is a gap in the literature about the relationship between the COO effect and the use of this communication tool from a practitioners’ perspective. On the contrary, from a consumers’ perspective, Tsai and Lu’s research find out a positive correlation between the use of product placement and the country image (Tsai & Lu, 2012). Moreover, due to the several studies concerning the positive impact of product placement and country of origin on brand equity, we are allowed to suppose that professionals can synergistically take advantage from both. Starting from Karrh’s studies on the practitioners’ perspective about product placement, our research aspires to draw any analogy and difference between Karrh’s findings and the Italian firm’s perceptions (Karrh, McKee, & Pardun, 2003; Karrh, 1995, 1998). Particularly, we aim to interview companies that belong to sectors where Made in Italy represents a key competitive component. In addition, our study attempts to explore if and how independent Italian firms exploit country of origin effect in their product placement in order to increase their brand equity. To answer our research questions, we could properly use the case study method (Yin, 2009). This qualitative methodology is very useful to explore unanticipated empirical discoveries (Eisenhardt, 1989). Our case study protocol will provide the analysis of three different data sources. In the first stage of our research, we will examine audio-visual materials, such as film, videotapes, websites and social media, to collect data in an unobtrusive method. In the second stage, we will go through public documents, newspapers and recent academic literature to understand trend topics on product placement and COO and to arrange guidelines suitable for the interviews. In the third ones, we will conduct in-depth face-to-face and semi-structured interviews with key figures of Made in Italy firms that integrated product placement in their communication mix at least once. More in details, interviews will be recorded and transcribed to ensure the completeness of the information gathered. Through the triangulation of these methods and sources we will achieve a richer and deeper data collection and we will also make the case study more detailed (Creswell, 2009). Although our research is still in progress, we expect to extend Karrh’s findings about product placement. More in details, we would like to focus our attention upon the integration between COO and product placement and we try to highlight any key element that can explain how to manage this relationship in order to increase brand equity.