PhD Research Student

Andriy KovalenkoAndriy Kovalenko

Research: Measuring effectiveness of negatively framed product placements

Degrees: MSc, Media Management, Syracuse University, USA and Specialist, Political Science, Donetsk National University, Ukraine

Email: andriy.kovalenko@otago.ac.nz

Area of PhD Research: Product/brand placement and movies

Start of PhD: February 2009

Supervisors: Dr Ben Wooliscroft and Dr John Guthrie

Short description of research topic:

Existing works on product placement mostly deal with the content analysis of movies in terms of placement execution and moviegoers’ attitudes/perceptions of placements. The latter research stream mainly focuses on measuring audience’s explicit memory of product placements, while implicit memory performance is studied only in a few works. In spite of the fact that products are often placed in the movies of negatively charged genres (e.g. horror, war, crime), few works study consumers’ response to the placements in negative environment. This research is intended to mitigate identified imbalance, and explore consumers’ conscious and unconscious response to products portrayed in the negative light in movies.