The Consumer, The Character and The Consumed: The Three Cs Model of Product Placement Effects Cristel Antonia Russell and Barbara B. Stern 1 The Consumer, The Character and The Consumed: The Three Cs Model of Product Placement Effects ... product placements act as implied celebrity endorsements. Whatever an actor is seen using or driving is seen as a statement of preference and choice (Marshall, 2001, www.normmarshall.com). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of product placements in television serial comedies on consumer attitudes. We draw from Heider's balance theory (1946, 1958) to explain the attitudinal effects of placed products on consumers in terms of a triadic relationship between consumer viewers of a sitcom, characters in it, and products that the characters use. The theory, originally developed in social psychology, was based on the assumption that humans have a preference for harmonious situations in which the relations in a triad composed of a person, another person, and an object is balanced when "all three of the relations are positive or when two of the relations are negative and one is positive" (Heider 1958, p. 202). Heider (1958) and later Osgood and Tannenbaum (1955) identified two types of relations (1958): liking refers to a person’s degree of positive or negative evaluation of something or someone and unit refers to the level of association between a person and another person or object, based, for example, on similarity, causality or ownership. A basic assumption of this theory is that liking relations and unit relations are mutually interdependent and tend toward a balanced state. In other words, if person X has a strong and positive relationship with person Y, then person X will tend to align his/her attitude toward an object/issue with that of person Y and this attitude alignment will be especially strong if the object/issue is central to person Y (Davis and Rosbult 2001). Balance theory was later applied to advertisements in terms of a balanced relationship 2 among consumers, celebrity endorsers and products to explain the transfer of attitudes from the celebrity to the product endorsed. Our transposition of the triad from celebrity advertisements to product placements rests on reconceiving the celebrity endorser as a program character who uses a placed product such that the entities are conceived of as consumers, characters in programs, and embedded products that are consumed. In accordance with the reframed theory, we present the "3Cs Model of Product Placements" to explain that a consumer's attitude toward a product placed in a program will depend on the strength and valence of two relations: one between the consumer-character and the other between the character-consumed. The model contributes to greater understanding of placement effects by extending prior research in which two factors were found to affect viewers' attitudes -- the way products are integrated in the program (d’Astous and Seguin 1999; Russell 1998, 2002), and the relationships viewers have with the program characters (Russell, Norman, and Heckler 2004) -- to include product-character relationships within a program genre, hitherto unexplored research areas. Genre theory in literary criticism is used to analyze product-character relationships specific to a media vehicle, for each one -- soaps, reality shows, mysteries, and so forth -- contains elements common to one genre but not to others. Sitcoms are comedic works in which the dramatic elements of character, plot, setting, dialogue and so forth interact to form a unique pattern (NOTE – note sure it is in our favor to state early on that there would be genre differences). Analysis of the pattern requires a turn to genre theory -- the branch of literary criticism dedicated to the classification of works -- as the most useful source of information about sitcom structure and purpose (Feuer 1992, Fowler 1982). The point of classification is to impose "order into the wide range of texts and meanings that circulate in our culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences" (Fiske 1987, p. 109) presumed to possess genre 3 knowledge by dint of exposure to similar texts. Second, to explain the relationships between viewer and character, we draw from parasocial interaction theory, instrumental in explaining the strength of the relationships between viewers and characters (Horton and Whol 1956). As viewers establish closer relationships with television characters, they tend to identify with them (Feilitzen and Linn 1975; Levy 1962), come to know and approve of their consumption practices, and even model their own consumption on that of the models (Russell et al. 2004). Figure 1 depicts the 3Cs Model of product placement attitudes with contributions of genre theory to the understanding of product- character relations and the contributions of parasocial interaction theory to the consumer- character relations. INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE The Placement Industry and Sitcoms The reason for studying placements is that clearer understanding can contribute not only to persuasion research but also to the placement industry's marketing strategy. Placements themselves are based on a marketing practice in which a firm pays for the right to feature its branded products in mass media films and television programs. The practice of integrating brands and entertainment has become a $1 billion dollar industry (Lasswell 2004) and is so commonplace that by 2005 placements are anticipated to occur in 75% of prime time broadcast network scripted shows (Consoli 2004). Sitcom placements provide particularly strong evidence of the strategy's effectiveness in boosting sales across product categories. For example, in the apparel category, a 35% rise in sales of Nick & Nora pajamas occurred between 1995 and 1998 when Ally McBeal (The Ally McBeal show) wore them as lounging outfits (Carter 2000; Stanley 1998). Similarly, in the non- 4 alcoholic beverage category, the 1990s growth in coffee bars such as Starbucks and New World Coffee has been attributed to their importance in urban sitcoms such as Frasier or Friends (Tueth 2000); in the alcoholic beverage category, the popularity of the Cosmopolitan martini is often attributed to its association with the women in Sex and the City. Indeed, the impact of placements on product sales is so well accepted that the strategy has become part of the marketing mix of over 1,000 U.S brands (Marshall and Ayers 1998), including large Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch (Vranica 2004). State of Research on Product Placement Effects Over the last decade, a healthy stream of research has developed to test the effects of product placements on audiences. Ever since product placement was identified as a hybrid message (Balasubramanian 1994) consumer and advertising researchers have begun to study its impact on memory (Babin and Carder 1996; Gupta and Lord 1998; Nelson 2002, Russell et al 2004), attitudes (d’Astous and Seguin 1999; Russell 2002) and behavior (Auty and Lewis 2004; Russell and Puto 1999). Still little is known about the driving forces that affect higher order effects, especially the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of product placement. Such effects must take into account the contextual factors which contribute meaning to the placed product, for example, the implied endorsement of a character or the way the product is used in the program (Sherry 1995). The notions of liking and unit relations is implied in much placement research to date but have not yet been integrated into a model of placement attitudes or tested empirically. One of the main challenges for product placement researchers is the difficult compromise between internal and external validity. Controlled experiments allow the manipulation of unit 5 relations related to the placed product, such as plot connection (Russell 2002), but cannot readily manipulate relations that viewers establish with the characters because made-for-research stimuli do not allow the development of viewer-character relationships. Conversely, field studies relying on existing programs allow the testing of real audience factors such as involvement with the program or connectedness to the characters (Russell et al 2004) but provide less control over the stimulus and placements (Babin and Carder 1996). THE THREE CS MODEL OF PLACEMENT EFFECTS Our paper extends the research on product placement effects by proposing and testing a new model to describe the attitudinal effects of product placements on viewers. The 3Cs model presented in Figure 1 depicts the balance between three components of the triad (Heider 1958): the consumer, the consumed and the character. It presents the theoretical roots underlying the character-consumed dyad and the consumer-character dyad that allow us to predict attitudinal effects for the third dyad: consumer-consumed (the consumer’s attitude toward the placed product). The theoretical root for studying the character-consumed dyad is genre theory, a form of classification found in literary criticism, here adapted to analyze product-character relationships in televised serial dramas. Genre studies reveal that different types of dramas (soaps, reality shows, Westerns, police procedurals) feature different types of characters and product roles, and sitcom (situation comedy) theory -- a new branch of comedy criticism -- is necessary to analyze the context in which characters and products appear. The justification is that the more we know about stimulus