Effects of brand placement strength, prior game playing experience and game involvement on brand recall in advergames

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of brand placement strength on gamers’ brand recall as moderated by gamers’ prior game playing experience and game involvement in the context of advergames. Specifically, this research utilizes Limited Capacity Model of attention to explain how and under what conditions brand placements create attention, elaboration and subsequent brand recall. Design/methodology/approach – A 2 (brand placement strength: prominent versus subtle) × 2 (prior game playing experience: experienced versus inexperienced) × 2 (game involvement: high versus low involvement) between-subjects measures design is used. Empirical data were obtained from 220 undergraduate student gamers. A between-subjects measures ANOVA is used to test the hypotheses. Findings – There are several important findings that can be inferred from the results. First, inexperienced gamers report high brand recall in prominent brand placements than subtle brand placements, whereas for experienced gamers, no significant difference in recall rates is found between prominent brand placement and subtle brand placement. Second, inexperienced gamers with low game involvement playing an advergame with prominent brand placement report high brand recall compared to inexperienced gamers with high game involvement playing an advergame with prominent brand placement. Research limitations/implications – The study contributes to the advertising literature from a non-traditional advertising perspective, particularly in the context of online advergames, and explains the role of brand placement and its boundary conditions to create customers’ brand memory. Moreover, this research contributes to the marketing knowledge on how to locate and embed the brands effectively in advergames, taking into account the individual characteristics of each advergame. Practical implications – The findings are very important for advertising practitioners because selecting media that enhances the brand memory of the consumers through entertainment is a planning strategy that has been widely used by media planners today. Hence, advertising managers should think about designing advergames by taking into account the game involvement factor to make sure that the implementation has the strongest positive effect on consumers’ memory. Originality/value – This research contributes to the literature of online advertising, especially the advergames by exploring the impact of brand placement strength and prior gaming experience on gamers’ brand recall. In addition, this study is the first step toward understanding the moderating role of game involvement on Indian gamers recall in the context of online advertising.