Product placement in movies: a comparison of Chinese and American consumers’ attitudes

In recent years there has been an increase in the practice of product placement. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory quantitative study of the attitudes of Chinese consumers towards product placement. The aim is to provide some insights into how similar, or different, these attitudes are to those of American consumers. Country differences were found to exist between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in terms of Chinese consumers generally being less accepting of product placement than American consumers, while individual differences were not found to have much of an impact given the major differences in cultural values between the US and the PRC. Also, more ethically-charged products generated greater concerns among both US and Chinese consumers than less ethically-charged products.