Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics

Effect of product involvement and brand prominence on advergamers’ brand

recall and brand attitude in an emerging market context
Devika Vashist,
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recall and brand attitude in an emerging market context", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and
Logistics, Vol. 30 Issue: 1, pp.43-61, https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-01-2016-0014
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Advergamers’
Effect of product involvement brand recall
and brand prominence on and brand
attitude
advergamers’ brand recall and
brand attitude in an emerging 43

market context Received 27 January 2016

Revised 27 June 2016
28 April 2017
Devika Vashist Accepted 29 May 2017

Department of Marketing and Strategy,

ICFAI Business School (IBS) Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India
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Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of product involvement and brand
prominence on advergamers’ brand recall and brand attitude in an emerging market context. Specifically, this
research illustrates the conditions under which brand placements in online games create attention,
elaboration and subsequent brand recall and brand attitude by drawing the insights from the limited capacity
model of attention and the elaboration likelihood model.
Design/methodology/approach – A 2 (product involvement: low or high) × 2 (brand prominence:
prominent or subtle) between-subject measures design is used. In total, 280 students participated in the study.
A 2 × 2 between-subjects MANOVA is used to test the hypotheses.
Findings – In the context of advergames, for a low-involvement product, a prominent brand placement
results in greater brand recall than a subtle brand placement. However, for a high-involvement product,
a subtle-placement results in greater brand recall than a prominent brand placement. Further, results reveal
that for a low-involvement product, a subtle brand placement results in more favorable brand attitude than a
prominent brand placement. For a high-involvement product, a prominent brand placement results in more
favorable brand attitude than a subtle brand placement.
Research limitations/implications – The findings and conclusions are very important for advertising
experts in terms of advergame designing, execution and for an operational use of brand placements
in advergames.
Originality/value – This investigation adds to the online advertising literature, specifically the advergames
context by examining and analyzing the real-time roles of advergame-specific factor, such as brand
prominence and the gamer-specific factor, such as product involvement in creating gamers’ brand recall
and brand attitude from attention and elaboration perspectives in an emerging market context like India.
Keywords Internet marketing, Advertising, Media effects, Persuasion, Branding strategies,
Integrated marketing communication (IMC)
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
In today’s world, smartphones play a major role in our lives. Along with making phone
calls and the ordinary usage, consumers install apps and even games on their mobile
devices (Cohen, 2016). For instance, on an average 16.152 billion games (24.85 percent
share of available apps: 65 billion in App Store) are downloaded from Apple App Store
(Statista, 2016a). A recent report shows that mobile phone gaming-penetration population
in the USA has increased from 25.9 percent in the year 2011 to 55.7 percent in the year
2016 and is projected to increase to 63.7 percent by 2020 (Statista, 2017). According to
eMarketer (2014), US adults spend 2 hours and 51 minutes per day on “non-voice
Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing
activities” on mobile devices. This suggests that, conceivably, there might be some and Logistics
symbols in those online games that remind gamers of the real life examples/issues. More Vol. 30 No. 1, 2018
pp. 43-61
precisely, those games might contain some brand logos or similar brand messages. In that © Emerald Publishing Limited
1355-5855
case, should such brand messages be transparent or presented at a subliminal level? DOI 10.1108/APJML-01-2016-0014
 APJML Will the effectiveness of such brand messages be subjected to the product involvement?
30,1 These are the two questions addressed by this research. More specifically, the present
research uncovers two things. First, is there any effect of brand prominence and product
involvement on gamers’ brand attitude? Second, how deep is the effect of these two
variables on players’ attitudes toward brands advertised in the online games?
Existing advertising research indicates that this can be an opportunity to grab
44 customers’ attention (Cheyne et al., 2013; Keng and Lin, 2006; Vashisht, 2015) as they are
indirectly engaged in brand messages (Calvert, 2008; Vashisht, 2016a), which in turn may
add to the effectiveness of advertising (Redondo, 2012; Yoo and Eastin, 2016). Literature on
advergames show that advergames are more effective than traditional media channels
because of consumers’ high interactive engagement with the brands integrated in
advergames for a longer duration of time (e.g. Bellman et al., 2014; Rozendaal et al., 2013;
Vashisht, 2015; Waiguny et al., 2013). Also, the past studies reveal that advergames build
positive brand images (Rosado and Agante, 2011), excellently transfer subtle associations,
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familiarity and experiences (rather than a solitary factual point) (Lee et al., 2009) and the
implanted interactivity of advergames persuades an experience of fun and relaxation
(Refiana et al., 2005; Lu and Wang, 2008). Furthermore, exhibiting ads in the background of
the games gives a sense of realism to the consumers (Marti-Parreno et al., 2013) which can
have an impact on brand recall and brand evaluations (d’Astous and Chartier, 2000;
Kretchmer, 2005; Schneider and Cornwell, 2005). The gaming literature also shows that
prominent brand placements (brands embedded in the foreground of the game) result in
higher brand memory than subtle placements (brands embedded in the background of the
game) (Van Reijmersdal, 2009; Van Reijmersdal et al., 2012; Vashisht, 2016b). Previous
research studies reveal that advertising effectiveness also gets influenced by the product
type (Nelson, 2002; Grigorovici and Constantin, 2004; Balasubramanian et al., 2006).
Greater brand recall rates were found for atypical and local brands than for national brands
embedded in games (Nelson, 2002) and also, the size of the object (big: car; small:
mobile phone) created differences in the players’ brand recall rates (Grigorovici and
Constantin, 2004). Literature on subliminal advertising indicates that subliminal advertising
could be less intrusive or annoying than paid media (Hudson and Hudson, 2006;
Nelson et al., 2004; Tsai et al., 2007). Also, the existing brand placement literature
acknowledges that product involvement could also be one of the factors that might affect
consumers’ brand memory and attitudes (Vashisht, 2017). Nonetheless, to our knowledge,
the existing literature in advergames has recognized the individual roles of brand
prominence and product involvement in determining advergaming effects
(Balasubramanian et al., 2006; Vashisht and Chauhan, 2014), but has not offered any
insights into how the transparency of advertisements in games (hereafter advergames)
may interact with product involvement and thereby impact the effectiveness of the
advergames. This is the gap that our research aims to fill.
Drawing from the limited capacity model (LCM) of attention (Kahneman, 1973) and
elaboration likelihood model (ELM: Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), we argue that for a
low-involvement product, a prominent brand placement results in greater brand recall than
a subtle brand placement. However, for a high-involvement product, a subtle brand
placement results in greater brand recall than a prominent brand placement. Also, it is
argued that for a low-involvement product, a subtle brand placement results in more
favorable brand attitude than a prominent brand placement, whereas, for a
high-involvement product, a prominent brand placement results in more favorable brand
attitude than a subtle brand placement. An experimental study confirms our prediction.
Furthermore, the emerging markets, such as India, China, Mexico, etc., have received
high attention in the global advertising arena (Paul and Mas, 2016). This is because
of the fact that emerging markets contribute almost 39 percent to the world GDP
 (emerging markets GDP ¼ US$29.25 trillion and world GDP ¼ US$75.21 trillion) and account Advergamers’
for 70 percent of the world’s total population (Statista, 2016b). It has attracted a number of brand recall
international companies in the emerging markets (International Monetary Fund, 2016). and brand
Furthermore, emerging markets are pronounced by a diverse market and represented by
numerous cultural and linguistic groups, thus calling for a comprehensive research into these attitude
markets (International Monetary Fund, 2016). Over and above this, the consumer behavior of
emerging markets also tends to be different and challenges the prevailing advertising models 45
(International Monetary Fund, 2016). Thus, it can be said that what holds good for a
developed market may not find a fit in an emerging market. Therefore, there is a necessity to
perform a comprehensive research on emerging markets, to find out what remains
unobserved and to exhibit new consumer understandings. Therefore, by taking an emerging
market context into consideration, the present study investigates the impact of product
involvement and brand prominence on the gamers’ brand recall and brand attitude.
The remainder of this study is organized as follows. In the next section, a theoretical
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background is provided, followed by hypotheses development. Then, the research

methodology is described, followed by the results of hypothesis testing. Later, a discussion
of results is presented, followed by the implications of the findings. Finally, the study
concludes with the limitations and the directions for future research.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

LCM
Enhancing brand awareness is one of the important objectives of advertisers in using brand
placements in games. Usually, it is presumed that while playing a game, the gamer will pay
attention not only toward the game-playing task, but also toward the embedded brand names
in the game. In the context of advergames, as game-playing task is the player’s primary focus
and embedding brands in the games is the secondary object of attention, it becomes important
for marketers and advertising practitioners to check whether in-game brand placements are
truly being viewed and paid attention by the players or not. There are two foremost facets of
attention: selective and intensive facets, as evident from the literature on attention
(e.g. Kahneman, 1973; Lang, 2000; Lang and Basil, 1998). Apportioned intellectual capacity for
a specific task is the intensive part of attention and selective apportionment of intellectual
capacity in preference to others is the selective part of attention (Kahneman, 1973; Lynch and
Srull, 1982; Olshavsky, 1994). These selective and intensive aspects of attention are explained
in the LCM theory (Kahneman, 1973). This theory is based on an assumption that the
cognitive capacity is required for message processing and at any particular point of time,
individuals can have the limited cognitive capacity (Kahneman, 1973; Lynch and Srull, 1982).
According to this theory, while multitasking, one’s total attentional capacity gets split into two
parts: one for the primary task and the remaining for the secondary task (Kahneman, 1973;
Lynch and Srull, 1982). Mental capacity, which gets used for the secondary task is called as
the spare capacity and the capacity which gets used for the primary task cannot be used for
the secondary task. In the context of advergames, for advergamers, game playing is the
primary task and processing the in-game placements is the secondary task (Grigorovici and
Constantin, 2004). Therefore, in the context of advergame, it can be said that the more the
attentional capacity gets used up for game-playing task, the less remains for processing
in-game brand placements.

ELM
This theory proposes that there are two roads to cognitive elaboration: the central route and
the peripheral route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). In the central route, cognitive elaboration
results from a person’s observant and attentive inspection of the correct features of the
message presented in favor of an involvement, whereas in case of peripheral route, cognitive
 APJML elaboration is a result of a person’s association with the cues present in the stimulus.
30,1 One adopts the central route when he/she is highly motivated and interested, and has ability
to think about the persuasive brand message (in the present study, it is a brand logo or name
or any brand identifier). On the other hand, one adopts the peripheral route when he/she has
low motivation and lesser ability to process the brand message. Therefore, the elaboration
likelihood is regulated by one’s motivation and ability to evaluate the brand information
46 being presented. Hence, based on these insights, it can be argued that, in the context of
advergames, game playing is the central value and the in-game advertised brand is the
peripheral value.

Effect of product involvement and brand prominence on brand recall

Involvement is one of the most studied constructs in consumer behavior as evidenced from
prior research (Bearden and Netemeyer, 1999; Bruner and Hensel, 1992). Past advertising
literature has shown that product involvement can significantly sway customers’
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brand-information processing and buying behavior (e.g. Celsi and Olson, 1988; Suh and
Yi, 2006). In advertising literature, product-category involvement has been defined as
“a person’s perceived relevance of the object based on inherent needs, values, and interest”
(Zaichkowsky, 1994, p. 61). It represents recognition that a specific product category may be
significant, to a more or lesser amount, to folks’ lives, their sense of identity and
individuality and their connection with others (Traylor, 1981). It is also described as
customers’ overall assessment of how vital the product is in his or her life, and is often
classified as situational and/or enduring involvement (Celsi and Olson, 1988; Houston and
Rothschild, 1978). Situational involvement can be induced by stimuli and cues from the
direct, external consumer environment, such as promotions and campaigns which may
trigger the personal goals and needs of the customers. Enduring involvement stays
apparent across conditions and situations, however, and can be accredited to the storing of
personal information within the knowledge structure of the product category, such as
personal experience. In this research, the product involvement is operationalized as an
enduring involvement with a product category, such as laptops and cars are high-involving
product categories; however, bathing soaps and shampoos are low-involving product
categories. In the literature, the enduring involvement is defined as “an individual difference
variable representing the arousal potential of a product or activity that causes personal
relevance” (Higie and Feick, 1989, p. 690). Particularly, with the enduring involvement,
individual relevance happens because the person relates the product to his/her self-image and
attaches some epicurean merits to the product. Thus, customers who are greatly involved with
a product category will attribute more meaning and significance to the product compared to a
product category with which they are less involved. This shows that one’s motivation for
information processing does get influenced by product-involvement factor.
In the context of advergames, gamers’ information-processing activity can best be
explained by the ELM theory (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). As ELM suggests that sometimes
users get swayed by “peripheral cues” presented in a persuasive message and those
peripheral cues can be comprised of any variable that is capable of affecting memory
without analysis of the brand message presented. Product involvement is one such variable
that influences the brand memory (e.g. Celsi and Olson, 1988; Suh and Yi, 2006). Based on
the insights drawn from ELM, it can be argued that when a high-involvement product is
placed in the game, one’s motivation and the ability to process in-game advertising should
be higher than the low product-involvement product condition. Therefore, consumers give
more time, attention and efforts to process product-related information for high-involving
products than low-involving products.
Regarding brand prominence, in advertising literature, brand placements in different
media platforms are mainly categorized into two categories, i.e. prominent brand placements
 and subtle brand placements. In the literature, prominent placements are described as the Advergamers’
placements of brands within media platforms (such as movies, programs, etc.) wherein brand recall
the products or/and other brand identifiers are highly visible and noticeable because of their and brand
big sizes or central positions on the screens or their supremacy to the action in the scenes
(Gupta and Lord, 1998; Vashisht and Royne, 2016). On the other hand, subtle brand attitude
placements are described as placements of brands in the background or peripherals of the
screens in small sizes or with low time of exposure (Gupta and Lord, 1998; Vashisht and 47
Royne, 2016).
Past research (e.g. Cauberghe and De Pelsmacker, 2010; Vashisht and Royne, 2016;
Yang and Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2007) has shown that in-game prominent placements result in
higher brand recall as brands are more perceptible and more likely to be retrieved from brand
memory than subtle brand placements. According to the ELM, in an advergame context,
game playing becomes the central value and the embedded brand is the peripheral value for
the gamers. Also, in accordance with LCM (Kahneman, 1973; Lynch and Srull, 1982),
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when playing an advergame, the attention of game player is mainly focused on the action of
the game rather than the in-game advertising. Since in prominent placements, brands appear
in the central part of the game screen, thus, processing of in-game brand placements is more
integral to the game-playing task (i.e. primary task), and requires a less spare capacity to
successfully perform the secondary task (i.e. processing in-game brand placements). However,
in subtle brand placements, since brands appear in the peripheral regions of the game screens
which are not easily noticeable and hence, more spare capacity is required for in-game
brand-information processing. As more attentional capacity gets used up in the primary task
itself in case of in subtle brand placements, remaining mental capacity is not sufficient for
brand-information processing. Thus, prominent placements result in higher recall than subtle
placements (Vashisht and Royne, 2016).
However, it is not true in all the conditions. For instance, literature available on
product-involvement reconnoiters that if there are differences in meaning attached to a
low- and high-involvement product category (e.g. Suh and Yi, 2006) and its insinuation for
processing mechanism, the effect of brand prominence on brand outcomes may not be the
same in relation to the product type. As prominent brand placements (big-sized brand
names moving or centrally placed on computer screens) are more cohesive in nature,
i.e. integrated into the advergame (Chambers, 2005), thereby having a greater context
connection or relevance (Russell, 1998) compared to subtle placements (small-sized brand
names or logos appearing in the background), it is predicted that the meaning attributed to a
prominent placement is higher than to a subtle placement. Russell (1998) found a disparity
between two aspects of meaning (here product involvement and brand prominence)
can enhance brand recall as a result of the incongruence of the stimuli that initiates the
thinking process, which leads to high cognitive elaboration.
In this study, congruence between stimuli refers to a combination of subtle placement of a
low-involvement product in an advergame or a prominent placement of a high-involvement
product in an advergame. In other words, in the present research, a congruent situation
refers to either a high-high condition of product involvement and brand prominence
(high-involvement product placed in the central position, i.e. with high noticeability) or a
low-low condition of product involvement and brand prominence (low-involvement product
placed in the peripheral position, i.e. with low noticeability). Likewise, incongruence between
stimuli refers to a combination of subtle placement of a high-involvement product in an
advergame or a prominent placement of a low-involvement product in an advergame.
Vashisht (2016b) drawing the insights from LCM and ELM theories showed that
incongruence can increase the noticeability and the memory of the brands embedded in the
games as gamers cognitively elaborate upon the incongruity issue to find out the reasons
behind subtly placing a high-involvement product or prominently placing a low-involvement
 APJML product because of their increased motivation, ability and opportunity (MAO). As a result,
30,1 in incongruence conditions (combination of subtle placement of a high-involvement
product in an advergame or a prominent placement of a low-involvement product in an
advergame), gamers exert more cognitive efforts to process advergame embedded brand
messages, which lead to higher brand recall than that in congruence conditions
(combination of subtle placement of a low-involvement product in an advergame
48 or a prominent placement of a high-involvement product in an advergame). With
respect to ELM, it can be said that playing activity becomes the central value and
information-processing activity becomes the peripheral value for the gamers. Also,
drawing the insights from LCM, it can be argued that while playing a game under
incongruent conditions (i.e. playing “a game prominently embedded with a low-involved
product” or “a game subtly placed with a high-involved product”), one’s spare capacity
will be high enough to process in-game brand placements which will result into an
increased cognitive elaboration. This in turn will lead to high brand memory unlike that in
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case of congruent conditions (i.e. playing “a game prominently embedded with a

high-involved product” or “a game subtly placed with a low-involved product”). Hence,
based on these rationales, following hypotheses are derived:
H1a. For a low-involvement product, a prominent brand placement results in greater
brand recall than a subtle brand placement.
H1b. For a high-involvement product, a subtle brand placement results in greater brand
recall than a prominent brand placement.

Effect of product involvement and brand prominence on brand attitude

Regarding the impact of congruence between stimuli (product involvement and brand
prominence) on consumers’ attitudes and in addition to the above mentioned rationales,
Mandler (1982) suggested that a congruent situation that fits well with consumers’ category
schemas results in more favorable evaluations as consumers like those results which
conform to their expectations. On the other hand, highly incongruent situation results in
misperception and hindrance as an incongruent stimulus cannot be acquiescent with
the prevailing perceptive structure (Campbell and Goodstein, 2001; Meyers-Levy and
Tybout, 1989). In the context of the present study, a congruence situation is either the
combination of subtle placement of a low-involvement product in an advergame or a
prominent placement of a high-involvement product in an advergame, and an incongruent
condition is either the combination of prominent placement of a low-involvement product in
an advergame or a subtle placement of a high-involvement product in an advergame.
Taking the insights from attention, elaboration and congruity literature previously
discussed and extending it to the context of advergames, it is reasoned that the level of
congruence between product involvement and brand prominence is related to the gamers’
attitudes toward the in-game placed brands such that the incongruence negatively
influences consumers’ attitudes by encouraging questions about the brand’s occurrence in
the game that in turn prompt resistance to the placements (Balasubramanian et al., 2006).
This cognitive elaboration may result in corrective mechanisms, such as suspicion or
counter-argumentation which might cause the formation of less favorable attitudes toward
in-game embedded brands compared to the congruence condition (similarity or connection
in the meaningfulness of stimuli).
On the other hand, the congruent conditions make the placements seem more natural and
regular; therefore, less effort is expended on thinking why they are there. In this way,
the congruent conditions (combination of subtle placement of a low-involvement product in
an advergame or a prominent placement of a high-involvement product in an advergame)
 will be perceived more acceptable and are more likely to generate favorable brand attitudes. Advergamers’
Thus, based on the rationales presented, following hypotheses are framed: brand recall
H2a. For a low-involvement product, a subtle brand placement results in more favorable and brand
brand attitude than a prominent brand placement. attitude
H2b. For a high-involvement product, a prominent brand placement results in more
favorable brand attitude than a subtle brand placement. 49

Research methodology
Overview
The purpose of the present research is to investigate the cause and effect relationships of
product involvement and brand prominence on brand recall and brand attitude, therefore,
the appropriate research design used is an experimental design (Malhotra et al., 2012).
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The following sections present the experiment in detail, including development of stimulus
materials, participants and design, manipulation of independent variables and measurement
of dependent variables.

Development of stimulus materials

Three pretests were conducted to select the stimulus for the manipulated variables, such as
product involvement (low vs high) and brand prominence (prominent vs subtle). Pretest 1 was
conducted in two steps. In the first step, an expert interview with four marketing professors
was conducted in order to select some fictitious brand names for 25 product categories. As a
result, 25 fictitious brand names were formed by the experts and written along with product
categories’ names (e.g. TEZ-Car, TECH-Laptop, INDHD-DSLR Camera AMOLA – Sports
Energy Drink, CRUNCHY-Chocolate, NUTRI-Protein Shake, THIRST-Sports Energy Drink,
SPEEDYWAGON-Car, BALDIET – Cornflakes, FASTPACE-Car, etc.). In the second step,
35 randomly selected students-participants were asked to indicate their involvement with the
products using a five-point ten-item scale of Zaichkowsky (1994). Based on the mean ratings,
AMOLA – Sports Energy Drink, NUTRI-Protein Shake and THIRST-Sports Energy Drink
brands for low-involvement category (ratings below 1.5) and TEZ-Car, SPEEDYWAGON-Car
and FASTPACE-Car brands for high-involvement condition (ratings above 4.5) were selected
for the study.
After pretest 1, pretest 2 was performed in two stages to select prominent and subtle
brand placements for the study. In stage 1, the same experts group was asked to select an
advergame theme that is widely used in online advergames from a list of ten game themes,
such as fighting, racing, cooking, parlor, aeronautical, adventure, horror, puzzle,
role-playing and crime. Based on the experts’ discussion, racing game theme was selected
for the study. In stage 2, a game developer agency was approached to make four different
advergames required for our study (high product involvement and prominent placement;
high product involvement and subtle placement; low product involvement and prominent
placement; and low product involvement and subtle placement) by inserting the already
selected fictitious brands. Brand prominence was manipulated through the concept of size
and position of brand names or logos or identifiers on the screens. In the prominent brand
placement condition, the brand name or logo was focally placed on the game screen in big
size, whereas in subtle brand placement condition, the brand name was small sized and
peripherally placed on the game screen. All the games were embedded with the fictitious
brands (selected in pretest 1) to avoid any potential priming effects. All the stimuli were
developed by the agency professionals.
After conducting pretest 2, pretest 3 was piloted to ratify the process carried out in pretests 1
and 2, specifically to confirm that the advergamers were differentiable in terms of prominent
 APJML vs subtle brand placements. To examine brand prominence, 30 students-participants who
30,1 regularly play the online games were randomly selected and were called to a computer
laboratory where they were asked to play games (advergames chosen in the stage 2) and rate
the extent to which they feel the brand is prominently placed in each game on a seven-point
bipolar scale (1 ¼ “not at all prominently placed” to 7 ¼ “very prominently placed”). The t-test
results indicated that the development of experimental conditions were successful
50 (Meanplacement (subtle) ¼ 2.13, Meanplacement (prominent) ¼ 4.52, t ¼ 2.75, p ¼ 0.000).

Participants and design

To examine the hypotheses, a 2 (product involvement: low or high) × 2 (brand prominence:
prominent or subtle) between-subject measures design was used. The participants were
selected from a large Indian university. Reason behind choosing a large Indian university
was the diversity (age, gender, race, religion and region) of students (more than 400,000
enrollments), faculties and staff in the university. Thus, this university was founded to be
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appropriate for the present study. Also, past studies reported that 90 percent of teens are
gamers (Mediaedge:cia, 2005; Reisinger, 2011), which supports that the use of student
sample is apposite for this study. Student-gamers who participated in the study were
management undergraduates and between the ages of 16-19 years. First, a random selection
of 500 students was conducted from a list of all the university students. Then, we contacted
them to seek their permission to participate in an experimental study. Those who showed
the interest to participate in the study were given a food coupon of Rs150 each. A total of 280
students (males ¼ 150 and females ¼ 138) participated in the study. The purpose of selecting
a big sample size of 280 for the present study was that we had a low expectation of the
response rate, though it turned out to be different. These respondents were called to a
computer lab where they were asked to play the advergames on individual consoles for ten
minutes. Respondents were randomly assigned to the different experimental conditions
(70 student-gamers in each condition) and the advergames to be played on the given
computers. After their exposure to advergames, participants were asked to fill up the
questionnaire, with items of manipulation checks and eliciting their responses to brand
recall and brand attitude (Note: the respondents were unaware that they had to recall the
brand names after playing the games. During the game-playing task, they were not told that
they had to recall the brand names after finishing the game-playing task. When they
finished game-playing task, then the questionnaire was given to them to elicit their
responses to brand recall and brand attitude).

Measures
In the present study, two independent variables, i.e. product involvement and brand
prominence were used which were manipulated during the study. The manipulation of
product involvement was measured on a five-point ten-item scale of Zaichkowsky (1994).
Likewise, the manipulation of brand prominence was measured on a seven-point bipolar
scale (1 ¼ “not at all prominently placed” to 7 ¼ “very prominently placed”).
The dependent variable, brand recall, was measured by asking participants to list
the brand names that appeared in the advergames. Two coders who were blind to the
experiment counted the number of brand names recalled. If a subject listed an advertised
brand correctly, it was coded as a correct response. An answer was coded as an incorrect
response if the participant did not list the advertised brand or listed a non-advertised brand
name. The numbers of correct responses ranged from 0 to 3 as there were three different
brands embedded in the advergames. Inter-coder reliability was checked and it found to be
satisfactory (α ¼ 0.87). The second dependent variable, brand attitude, was measured by
using a semantic differential scale with the bipolar adjective items (good/bad, like/dislike,
favorable/unfavorable and positive/negative), adapted from Wise et al. (2008).
 Data analyses and results Advergamers’
Sample characteristics brand recall
A Shapiro-Wilk’s test ( p W0.05) (Shapiro and Wilk, 1965; Razali and Wah, 2011) and a and brand
visual inspection of their histograms, normal Q-Q plots and box plots showed that brand
recall scores were approximately normally distributed for both high and low product
attitude
involvement with a skewness of −0.046 (SE ¼ 0.409) and a kurtosis of −1.184 (SE ¼ 0.798)
for low product involvement and a skewness of −0.061 (SE ¼ 0.491) and a kurtosis of −1.132 51
(SE ¼ 0.953) for high product involvement. Similarly, normality plots with tests showed that
brand recall scores were approximately normally distributed for both subtle and prominent
brand placements with a skewness of −0.227 (SE ¼ 0.501) and a kurtosis of −1.103
(SE ¼ 0.972) for subtle brand placement and a skewness of 0.233 (SE ¼ 0.403) and a kurtosis
of −0.811 (SE ¼ 0.788) for prominent brand placement (Cramer, 1998; Cramer and
Howitt, 2004; Doane and Seward, 2011).
Furthermore, a Shapiro-Wilk’s test ( pW0.05) (Shapiro and Wilk, 1965; Razali and Wah,
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2011) and a visual inspection of their histograms, normal Q-Q plots and box plots showed that
brand attitude scores were approximately normally distributed for both high and low product
involvement with a skewness of 0.373 (SE ¼ 0.364) and a kurtosis of 0.583 (SE ¼ 0.716) for low
product involvement and a skewness of −0.011 (SE ¼ 0.387) and a kurtosis of −0.882
(SE ¼ 0.758) for high product involvement. Similarly, normality plots with tests showed that
brand attitude scores were approximately normally distributed for both subtle and prominent
brand placements with a skewness of 0.124 (SE ¼ 0.441) and a kurtosis of −1.001 (SE ¼ 0.858)
for subtle brand placement and a skewness of 0.208 (SE ¼ 0.448) and a kurtosis of 1.462
(SE ¼ 0.872) for prominent brand placement (Cramer, 1998; Cramer and Howitt, 2004;
Doane and Seward, 2011).

Manipulation checks
The manipulation check for product involvement through a one-way analysis of variance
(ANOVA) showed a significant mean difference (F (1, 120) ¼ 2.81, p o 0.05) between the
low-involvement product (M ¼ 2.243) and high-involvement product (M ¼ 4.655).
Likewise, manipulation check for brand prominence showed a significant mean
difference (F (1, 120) ¼ 2.95, p o 0.05) between the prominent-placement games
(M ¼ 5.251) and subtle-placement games (M ¼ 3.121). Also, full-model ANOVAs
(2 product involvement × 2 brand prominence) were done to check whether there were
confounding effects of brand prominence or product involvement manipulations on
product involvement (F (1, 120) ¼ 2.88, p ¼ 0.000) and brand prominence (F (1, 120) ¼ 2.92,
p ¼ 0.001) values. Manipulation check results showed that there were no confounding
effects of brand prominence or product involvement manipulations on product
involvement and brand prominence. Hence, overall, checks of the manipulations
revealed that all the manipulations were successful.

Hypotheses testing
An ANOVA on brand recall as the dependent variable revealed a significant main effect for
product involvement (F (1, 276) ¼ 44.02, p o0.05). Respondents reported higher brand recall
with low product involvement than high product involvement (Mlow involvement ¼ 2.11 vs
Mhigh involvement ¼ 0.58). The results revealed a significant main effect for brand prominence
(F (1, 276) ¼ 38.46, po0.05), indicating that prominent brand placement led to higher brand
recall than subtle brand placement (Mprominent placement ¼ 2.54 vs Msubtle placement ¼ 1.02).
Furthermore, a significant interaction effect was found between product involvement and
brand prominence on brand recall (F (1, 276) ¼ 165.83, po0.05). Follow-up contrasts indicated
that with low product involvement, respondents had higher brand recall with prominent
 APJML placement (Mprominent placement ¼ 2.80 vs Msubtle placement ¼ 1.02; F (1, 138) ¼ 11.65, po0.01);
30,1 while with high product involvement, subjects reported higher brand recall with subtle
placement (Mprominent placement ¼ 1.11 vs Msubtle placement ¼ 2.03; F (1, 138) ¼ 8.32, po0.01).
Moreover, another ANOVA on brand attitude as the dependent variable revealed a
significant main effect for product involvement (F (1, 276) ¼ 113.51, p o0.05). Respondents
reported more favorable brand attitude with high product involvement than low product
52 involvement (Mhigh involvement ¼ 3.8 vs Mlow involvement ¼ 2.11). The results revealed a
significant main effect for brand prominence (F (1, 276) ¼ 119.62, p o0.05), indicating that
prominent brand placement led to more favorable brand attitude than subtle brand
placement (Mprominent placement ¼ 3.54 vs Msubtle placement ¼ 1.97). Furthermore, a significant
interaction effect was found between product involvement and brand prominence on brand
attitude (F (1, 276) ¼ 132.29, p o0.05). Follow-up contrasts indicated that with low product
involvement, respondents had more favorable brand attitude with subtle placement
(Mprominent placement ¼ 1.50 vs Msubtle placement ¼ 2.97; F (1, 138) ¼ 12.65, p o0.01); while with
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high product involvement, subjects reported more favorable brand attitude with prominent
placement (Mprominent placement ¼ 2.54 vs Msubtle placement ¼ 1.27; F (1, 138) ¼ 6.41, p o0.01).
Thus, H1a-H2b are supported (see Figures 1 and 2). ANOVA results are tabulated in Table I.

Brand Subtle placement

recall
mean Prominent placement

Figure 1.
Brand prominence ×
product involvement
on brand recall
Low involvement High involvement

Brand Subtle placement

attitude
Prominent placement
mean

Figure 2.
Brand prominence ×
product involvement
on brand attitude
Low involvement High involvement
 Effects Mean F-value Significance
Advergamers’
brand recall
Product involvement on brand recall (F (1, 276) ¼ 44.02, p o0.05) and brand
Low product involvement 2.11 44.02 0.000
High product involvement 0.58 attitude
Brand prominence on brand recall (F (1, 276) ¼ 38.46, p o0.05)
Prominent placement 2.54 38.46 0.000 53
Subtle placement 1.02
Product involvement on brand attitude (F (1, 276) ¼ 113.51, p o0.05)
Low product involvement 2.11 113.51 0.000
High product involvement 3.8
Brand prominence on brand attitude (F (1, 276) ¼ 119.62, po 0.05)
Prominent placement 3.54 119.62 0.000
Subtle placement 1.97
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Product involvement (PI) × brand prominence on brand recall (F (1, 276) ¼ 165.83, po 0.05)
Low-PI × prominent placement 2.80 11.65 0.002
Low-PI × subtle placement 1.02
High-PI × prominent placement 1.11 8.32 0.000
High-PI × subtle placement 2.03
Product involvement (PI) × brand prominence on brand attitude (F (1, 276) ¼ 132.29, p o0.05)
Low-PI × prominent placement 1.50 12.65 0.000
Low-PI × subtle placement 2.97
High-PI × prominent placement 2.54 6.41 0.001 Table I.
High-PI × subtle placement 1.27 Results

Also, in hypothesis testing, a 2 (product involvement: low or high) × 2 (brand prominence:

prominent or subtle) between-subject measures MANOVA was performed with brand recall
and brand attitude as the dependent measures and product involvement (high or low)
and brand prominence (prominent or subtle) as the predictor variables to further confirm
ANOVAs results. Moreover, it might happen that there could be certain correlations
between the dependent variables, thus, MANOVA was used in the present study. MANOVA
results revealed a significant two-way interaction effect of product involvement × brand
prominence on brand recall and brand attitude (Wilk’s Λ ¼ 0.581, F (1, 276) ¼ 194.223,
p o0.01). A detailed examination through preplanned contrast tests showed that prominent
brand placement (vs subtle brand placement) in low product involvement condition was
significant and resulted in higher brand recall (Wilk’s Λ ¼ 0.572, F (1, 276) ¼ 78.24, p o0.01,
Mrecall (prominent placement/low involvement) ¼ 2.93), Mrecall (subtle placement/low involvement) ¼ 1.31).
On the other hand, gamers who played games with subtle brand placement (vs prominent
brand placement) in high product involvement condition was significant and resulted in
greater brand recall (Wilk’s Λ ¼ 0.533, F (1, 276) ¼ 123.91, p o0.01, Mrecall (subtle placement/high
involvement) ¼ 2.51, Mrecall (prominent placement/high involvement) ¼ 1.73).
Further, results showed that gamers who played games with subtle brand placement
(vs prominent brand placement) in low product involvement condition was significant and
resulted in more favorable brand attitude (Wilk’s Λ ¼ 0.509, F (1, 276) ¼ 141.87, p o0.01,
(Mattitude (subtle placement/low involvement ¼ 2.88), Mattitude (prominent placement/low involvement ¼ 1.55)).
Moreover, those who played games with prominent brand placement (vs subtle brand
placement) in high product involvement condition was significant and resulted in more
favorable brand attitude (Wilk’s Λ ¼ 0.527, F (1, 276) ¼ 164.34, p o0.01, (Mattitude (prominent
placement/high involvement ¼ 2.94), Mattitude (subtle placement/high involvement ¼ 1.21)). Thus, ANOVA
results are confirmed and H1a-H2b are supported.
 APJML Discussion
30,1 So far, research on digital games has mainly examined advergaming effects on players’
brand responses either from only attention perspective (see Lee and Faber, 2007) or by using
attitude models, such as associative-propositional evaluation model (see Gawronski and
Bodenhausen, 2006) or transfer effect (see Kinard and Hartman, 2013). Most advergame
studies were conducted in developed countries (see Folkvord, 2012; Folkvord et al., 2015;
54 Harris et al., 2012; Mallinckrodt and Mizerski, 2007; Peters and Leshner, 2013, etc.) and most
empirical work has used children sample to examine the advergaming effects (see An and
Stern, 2011; Culp et al., 2010; Folkvord, 2012; Folkvord et al., 2015; Harris et al., 2012;
Mallinckrodt and Mizerski, 2007; Pempek and Calvert, 2009, etc.). Nonetheless, the present
research fills all these research gaps. First, this paper investigates the advergaming effects
on the brand recall and the brand attitude from two perspectives, i.e. attention and
elaboration. Second, it examines the combined effects of the game-specific factor, such as
brand prominence and the gamer-specific factor, such as product involvement. Third,
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this paper inspects the advergaming effects in an emerging market context like India.
Finally, the present study explores advergaming effects on 16-19 years age group.
This experimental study inspected the effect of advergames on gamers’ brand recall and
attitudes, specifically how the elaborative components, such as product involvement and brand
prominence shape the same. The study findings showed that for a low-involvement product, a
prominent brand placement resulted in higher brand recall than a subtle brand placement,
whereas, for a high-involvement product, a subtle brand placement resulted in superior brand
recall than a prominent brand placement. These findings support the theory that incongruence
conditions (referred to here as low involvement with prominent placement and high
involvement with subtle placement) can upturn the noticeability and brand recall as gamers
cognitively elaborate upon the incongruity issue because of their increased MAO to find out the
reasons behind subtly placing a high-involvement product or prominently placing a low-
involvement product. Consequently, incongruence conditions (prominent placement of a low-
involvement product and subtle placement of a high-involvement product) lead to greater recall
than congruence conditions (combination of subtle placement of a low-involvement product in
an advergame or a prominent placement of a high-involvement product in an advergame).
Furthermore, the study also revealed that for a low-involvement product, a subtle
brand placement resulted in more favorable brand attitude than a prominent brand
placement. However, for a high-involvement product, a prominent brand placement
resulted in more favorable brand attitude than a subtle brand placement. These findings
support that theory that not only incongruous conditions (prominent placement of a
low-involvement product and subtle placement of a high-involvement product) increase
recall, but also counter-argumentation or adverseness which may develop less favorable
attitudes toward advergame embedded brands. In contrast, the congruence conditions
(subtle placement of a low-involvement product or a prominent placement of a
high-involvement product in an advergame) make the brand placements appear more
regular and natural; therefore, in such congruent situations less cognitive efforts are
used to know the reasons of placing brands in advergames.
Also, the present research advances various recent and existing advergame studies, such
as, Lee and Cho (2017), Vanwesenbeeck et al. (2016), Vashisht (2017), etc. This study
advances the theory used in the existing advergame studies as the present study highlights
the importance of studying advergaming effects from an integrated angle, i.e. using
“attention” and “elaboration” theories together. In addition, the existing advergame studies
either highlight the impact of the game factors or the individual factors, whereas the present
research reveals the simultaneous impact of the game factor as well as the individual factor.
Hence, this paper adds to the advertising literature, specifically the non-traditional online
advertising literature, in an emerging context.
 Implications Advergamers’
Theoretical implications brand recall
In spite of certain limitations, this study provides various serious theoretical and practical and brand
implications. First, from a theoretical viewpoint, much of the previous brand placement
research examined the individual impact of product involvement and prominence in
attitude
audio-visual content, such as television, film and video games. In this study,
the simultaneous effect of product involvement and brand prominence on consumers’ 55
brand memory and attitudes was investigated from attention and elaboration perspectives
in an emerging market context like India. Second, due to many variations in the
demographic composition of internet users (Internet Live Stats, 2016), this research signifies
a critical contribution as it adds to the limited body of research exploring consumers’ brand
responses in an emerging market context. Third, this research illustrates the conditions
under which brand placements in online games create attention, elaboration and subsequent
brand recall and brand attitude by drawing the insights from LCM and ELM theories.
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Fourth, consistent with existing advertising literature on congruity and incongruity

factor, this research showed that incongruence situation, i.e. prominently placed
low-involvement product and subtly placed high-involvement product in advergames
resulted in a higher brand recall.
However, favorable brand attitudes were observed in the congruent situations, i.e.
prominently placed high-involvement product and subtly placed low-involvement product
in advergames. This finding supports Mandler’s (1982) incongruity effects theory which
suggested that the evaluation of incongruity is reliant on how promptly one can sufficiently
resolve the incongruity. In cases of extreme incongruity, ones that cannot be easily resolved,
consumers are likely to form less favorable attitudes; however, moderate incongruity that
can be resolved may be seen as interesting or positively valued or highly favorable
(Mandler, 1982). Because the placement in question here was subtle, it enticed adequate
attention to be considered moderately incongruent and was easily resolved, likely leading to
a more positive evaluation ( Jagre et al., 2001). Furthermore, this finding should warrant
further research into incongruity effects for various consumer groups. Finally, this study
demonstrates the cognitive mechanisms involved in processing advergame embedded
brand messages.

Managerial implications
From a practical viewpoint, the brand recall results show that for a low-involvement
product, a prominent brand placement (2.93) results in higher brand recall than a subtle
brand placement (1.31), whereas, for a high-involvement product, a subtle brand placement
(2.51) results in superior brand recall than a prominent brand placement (1.73). Furthermore,
brand attitude results show that for a low-involvement product, a subtle brand placement
(2.88) resulted in more favorable brand attitude than a prominent brand placement (1.55),
whereas, for a high-involvement product, a prominent brand placement (2.94) results in
more favorable brand attitude than a subtle brand placement (1.21). The results suggest that
marketers must prudently consider the use of in-game brand placements when seeking to
attain attitudinal objectives. These findings suggest that if increasing gamers’ recall is the
advertiser’s goal, it would be best to prominently place a low-involvement product in an
advergame or subtly embed a high-involvement product in the game. However,
if developing a positive brand attitude is the advertiser’s goal, it may be best to subtly
place a low-involvement product or prominently embed a high-involvement product in an
advergame. In addition to these implications, this paper also highlights that to develop
highly effective advergames, instead of considering only attention factors or only cognitive
elaboration factors, both the factors together must be taken into consideration. Specifically,
this paper explores that other than game-specific factors, such as brand prominence, there
 APJML are certain gamer-specific factors, such as product involvement, which can moderate
30,1 the effect of game factors on gamers’ brand memory and attitudes.
Largely, this paper contributes to the growing body of research investigating the impact
that different placement strategies of in-game advertising have on communication efficacy.
Marketers and advertisers unavoidably face a latent trade-off between high brand recall and
unfavorable brand attitudes. Results from this research indicate some stratagems that
56 practitioners can execute for in-game brand placements, particularly for advertising
practitioners who want to market a new brand or product by using a non-conventional
communication channel, i.e. through digital games.

Implications for the game consumers and society

Other than various theoretical and practical implications, this study also has some very
important social implications. With the right knowledge about advergames, highly
informative and effective advergames can be made to cultivate good social habits and
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culture among youth or game consumers especially the college going students. For instance,
these days students get exposed to numerous ads endorsing unhealthy food which give rise
to various health-related problems. Thus, for the betterment of the society and to educate
youth, some very informative and highly attractive advergames can be developed in which
this paper’s study findings can be exploited. In other words, advergames can be best
used as learning tools by considering the findings of this study, i.e. use of a right
combination of brand prominence and product-involvement factors while making
informative and educational advergames for the betterment of society. Furthermore, with
a right combination of game- (brand prominence) and gamer-specific (product-involvement)
factors, effective advergames can be developed and used as recruitment tools by the
companies. For example, an advergame “The Great Global Adventure” was developed by
AXA insurance company to raise awareness of AXA as an international graduate employer
(AXA Newsroom, 2015). Hence, effective advergames with such effects can be developed by
taking a right mix of brand prominence and product-involvement factors into consideration.

Limitations and future research

This study investigated the advergaming effects in a specific country context – i.e. India.
It will be worthwhile to look at different country contexts, i.e. cross-cultural advergame
studies can be conducted considering the gamers from various other countries. Also, the
findings of this paper can be extended and further confirmed on different countries’ gamers
as the usage of non-traditional advertising media by companies in different countries are not
same. Furthermore, it would be very interesting to elicit a comparison between countries
with higher levels of usage of non-traditional advertising media, such as the USA and the
UK and those with lower rates of non-traditional advertising media, for instance, developing
nations. Moreover, this paper considered only management students between the ages of
16 and 19 years; thus, future research studies can explore advergaming effects on
consumers from different age groups as the gaming literature shows that today the gaming
trend is changing, gamers playing online games are mostly women and the average age of
an online game player is 31 years (ESA, 2014). Hence, advergame studies focusing different
age group people can be considered for future research exploring many more interesting
facts about advergaming effects. Another limitation of the study is that only fictitious
brands were used in the study to investigate the advergaming effects; however, marketing
scholars can conduct future advergame studies by taking real brands into consideration to
extend and confirm study findings. Also, to analyze the differences in advergaming effects
between those of fictitious brands and real brands, by exploring the influence of various
real-brand-related factors, such as brand familiarity, brand likability, etc., in combination
with other game- and gamer-specific factors, future research can be conducted. Another
 limitation of this study could be that it tested the effects of only two factors, such as product Advergamers’
involvement and brand prominence on gamer’s brand memory and attitude, but roles of brand recall
some more new factors, such as game product congruence, gamers’ persuasion knowledge, and brand
game involvement and prior game experience in determining gamers’ brand memory and
attitude can be inspected in future research studies. attitude

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About the author

Dr Devika Vashist received PhD in Management from IBS Hyderabad, IFHE University, India.
She is presently working as an Assistant Professor at IBS Hyderabad, India. Her areas of interest are
marketing management, advertising, branded entertainment, persuasion, brand placements,
advergames and marketing research. She has presented several research papers in various
international conferences and published various research articles in international journals, such
as Computers in Human Behavior, Internet Research, Young Consumers, Journal of Indian Business
Research, Journal of Asia Business Studies, International Journal of Internet Marketing and
Advertising, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Management Research Review and
Business Sciences International Research Journal (IMRF journals). In her research line, she has also
won two Best Paper Awards: one at International Marketing Conference on “Globalizing Brand
India: Opportunities and Challenges” conducted by IIM Kashipur, India in the year 2015 and other
Best Paper Award at “2015 Society for Marketing Advances Conference” held at San Antonio, Texas,
USA. Dr Devika Vashist can be contacted at: [email protected]

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