LAUSR

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of audience characteristics (who engage with the media content and characters) on brand placement memory. A theoretical framework was empirically tested to examine the influence of predictor variables that includes cognitive and affective reactions, star liking and identification with character on brand recall, from 420 responses gathered from a stimuli-based questionnaire administered to 18-34 age group audiences. To validate the hypotheses, PLS analysis (a variance-based structural equation modelling technique) was conducted using Smart-PLS. The results demonstrate that pleasure, arousal, cognitive effort and star liking do not have a direct influence on brand recall. However, it has indirect influence on brand recall through identification with a character that plays a significant role in memory of brand placement. Audiences who are highly involved in entertainment content and with characters hold the ability to recall brands placed in entertainment content. This engagement with the content and character ultimately results in brand recall and thereby marketers, production houses and brand placement agencies may target the Indian audiences’ memory of brands movies through media characters.