Product placement in American movies : How do Chinese young people perceive them and respond to them ?

Abstract

Nowadays, the American market of product placements in movies is soaring year by year with the extensive and international distributing of American movies. As product placements are also evidently spreading across nations, different audiences are possible to have distinct perceptions, diverse responses, or opposing attitudes towards them. Some previous studies have already indicated that cultural differences can influence audiences’ perceptions, responses towards product placements in movies. Meanwhile, most previous studies in the field of product placements are based on western society. Thus, our paper continues to develop those studies and tries to examine if those western studies are convincing to interpret Chinese young audiences. In our qualitative study, we interviewed several Chinese young audiences with three American movie clips chosen to collect their responses and attitudes towards product placement in American movies. We adopted context analysis to process those data and in the end, we found that Chinese young audiences are generally positive to product placements. Besides, they tend to perceive well-known brands or Chinese brands in American movies. They also show fewer concerns to ethical product placements in American movies compared to western audiences. Additionally, we discovered that some previous western findings are appliable to interpret Chinese young audiences