Consumers' perception of the ethics and acceptability of product placement in movies : African Americans and Anglo Americans

The goal of the study was to explore African Americans’ perceptions and acceptance of products used for placement in movies and to compare their perceptions to those of Anglo Americans. A mix between and repeated measures ANOVA was run to test four hypotheses dealing with race, gender and product differences. A factor analysis was run on the 30 attitudinal measures. A content analysis was done on the comments obtained from the open-ended question. Cross-tabulations were run on product and media consumption data. The results indicated that there are differences in the perceptions and acceptance of products used for placement in movies across ethnic and cultural groups in the U.S., specifically African American and Anglo Americans. Not only were African Americans less likely to accept ethically charged products for product placement in movies than Anglo Americans, their product acceptance ratings, in general, were lower than those of Anglo Americans. In fact, African American males rated all of the products lower than African American females and Anglo American males and females. The implications are that product, race, gender, frequency of movie watching and attitudinal differences should be considered when the product placement strategy is used. Advertisers and marketers should use caution when using the product placement strategy to target the African American market and when selecting the types of products to be used for placement.