engleski

Product Placement

Despite the risk of losing current and potential customers due to socially irresponsible behavior, a lot of companies decide to improve their marketing mix with product placement. Besides the danger of losing customers, this form of advertising brings along the danger of penalty, usually followed by big fines. Nevertheless, the reason for such a dangerous behavior of the producer i.e. advertiser can be found in high returns of investment in product placement in case when customers are not even aware of the presence of advertisement, and a very low probability of punishment. On the other hand, this form of advertising harms the customers who receive rather distorted information from the media that are expected to provide truthful information. The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of product placement and its types, i.e. the differences between different types of media in which product placement is used, and also to determine customer awareness of product placements they come across on a daily basis and to what extent they are threatened by them. The results of the conducted research show the customer’s inability to perceive a product placement. Despite the aforementioned facts, 58% of respondents believe they are not threatened by this type of advertising. When it comes to the legislation, the results point out that only 9% of respondents think that prevention of the above mentioned form of advertising in the Republic of Croatia is well organized, and insufficient public awareness is identified as the main cause that leads to the absence of their reaction. This contradicts the hypothesis stating that the difficulty of proving guilt is the main cause for it. From the above, it can be concluded that product placement is extremely neglected and, moreover, it is also an omnipresent punishable offense which affects the judgment of many, especially when it implies advertising in the news media. Many causes can be found for this particular problem, one of them being the public’s lack of knowledge and their carelessness regarding the issues involved.

product placement; truth in journalism; legislation

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