A STUDY ABOUT CUSTOMERS ATTITUDE TOWARDS PRODUCT PLACEMENTS IN MOVIES

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 breaks 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 Tamil audience in focus. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is: “…to investigate what attitudes the Tamil audience has towards product placements in Movies and TV-shows”, which will lead to a greater knowledge for Tamil marketing managers about the attitudes towards product placement in Tamilnadu. The study showed that the general attitude towards product placement is positive for the Tamil 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.