Make it part of the story: The role of product placement prominence and integration in fashion and beauty blogs among young digital natives

ABSTRACT Product placement is one of the most widely used marketing and advertising strategies. Although previous research has examined the role of different key variables in traditional media, the effect of prominence and integration in product placement strategies that appear in digital media such as fashion and beauty blogs has not been fully investigated. A 2 (Prominence: “low” vs. “high”) X 2 (Integration: “low” vs. “high”) between-subjects experiment was conducted to examine the impact of these variables on young digital natives consumers’ recall and attitudes towards the product, the brand, the blogger and the post. The results show that integrated placements are effective at eliciting brand and product recall and improving attitudes towards the post and the blogger. Prominence, on the other hand, did not have the expected impact on brand or product recall. In addition, Prominent product placement did increase consumers’ suspicion of the persuasion attempt. Implications and recommendations for bloggers and marketers are discussed.