Too obvious or not? The effect of prominence and blogger familiarity on brand attitude towards placed products

In the past years, product placement has developed into a popular advertising and can play a significant role in gaining a competitive advantage. Not only do product placements help brands to break through the commercial clutter but also to deal with consumers who are becoming more skilled at avoiding commercials. Currently, an increasing number of placements take place on blogs. Due to their personal approach, bloggers are considered to be highly persuasive. Important in this process is the existence of parasocial interaction. Bloggers create a more personal relationship with their audience by disclosing information about their private lives. However, little research has been done on product placement on blogs. Hence, the aim of this research is to study the effectiveness of product placements on blogs, when considering the prominence of the placement and the prior familiarity with the blogger. Drawing on previous studies that were conducted on other media platforms, this study will apply a mixture of current models while aiming to improve and further develop them in the context of blogs. To measure the impact of prominence and familiarity on brand attitude, an experiment was conducted among Dutch women between 15 and 30 years old. The findings of this study indicated that product placement on blogs have an effect on brand attitude of consumers. When evaluating the effect of both independent variables separately, it appeared that familiarity with the blogger had no significant effect on brand attitude while prominence did have an effect on brand attitude. Yet, the most important finding in this study is the existence of an interaction effect, namely that the effect of prominence is dependent on the familiarity with the blogger. The results of this study can serve as a foundation for future studies that aim to research the effectiveness of product placement on blogs. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.