Product Placement : A study about Swedes attitude towards product placements in Movies and TV-shows

Marketers have always been looking for alternative ways to reach the target population with their messages. One approach that has grown the last decades is product placement that has become a large arena for companies to involve in their marketing communication. It has been shown that people tend to dislike traditional advertisement such as commercial brakes in TV and tries to avoid it by switching channel. Since product placement is a type of advertisement that is embedded in a movie or TV-show and cannot be zapped away without missing the story of the movie or TV-show, it is a good opportunity to reach out with a company’s message. Several studies have been done in the field of mapping the attitudes towards product placement but no research has been done with the Swedish audience in focus. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is: “…to investigate what attitudes the Swedish audience has towards product placements in Movies and TV-shows”, which will lead to a greater knowledge for Swedish marketing managers about the attitudes towards product placement in Sweden. This thesis is a quantitative study with a descriptive single cross-sectional design. The data was retrieved through a questionnaire online. The sample frame was generation Y which is people that are between the ages 18-35. The study showed that the general attitude towards product placement is positive for the Swedish audience. When it comes to the different dimensions of product placement; visual-only, audio-only and a combination audio-visual it is shown that the visual placements is seen as the most positive way to place a product in a movie or a TV-show. It could also be seen several similarities with previous studies that prominent placement has a lower attitude while a subtle placements has a more positive attitude.