Product Placement in life simulation video games: A quantitative analysis on the effect of product placement of luxury and non- luxury brands on purchase intention.

The increasing popularity of the video game industry has provided advertisers and marketers a new avenue for marketing and product placement research. Brands aim to target consumer in personal and relevant way, investing in this way towards product placement in video games platforms. However, there is conflicting research in regards to product placement effectiveness, specifically towards whether product placement affects consumer’s purchase intention. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the product placement (permanent product placement, semi-permanent product placement and no-permanent product placement) of luxury brands and non-luxury brands in the life simulation video games affect purchase intention. Drawing on previous studies that were conducted on product placement in different fields, this study will have a combination of current theories and models while aiming to improve and extend them in the context of the video game industry. An experiment was designed to a sample of university students between the age of 18-26 years old to investigate how Gucci and H&M’s product placement affects purchase intention in the life simulation video game of Sims. Participants were asked to visualise a case scenario with real-life product placement of Gucci and H&M on Sims (edition 4) and rate nine statements. The findings of the study show that individuals are more likely to purchase non-luxury brands compared to non-luxury brands in the life simulation video games. When looking at the effect of product placement types on purchase intention, results showed that product placement does not influence purchase intention. None of the product placement type had an impact on purchase intention. Lastly there was no interaction effect between brand type and product placement type on purchase intention. Moreover, these results provide meaningful insights for marketing managers regarding which brand types influence purchase intention in the life simulation video game genre. For future research, it would be interesting to investigate advergames, a new less traditional approach to product placement in video games and research on its effectiveness.