Case Study: The Japanese Animation Industry

I. Introduction The Japanese animation (in this study referred to as anime) industry is currently struggling to overcome problems connected to low budgets production, tremendous amounts of work and underpayment of animators (Condry, 2013: 14-15). The solution to this problem has traditionally been believed to be character merchandising-related businesses. In fact, the industry related to selling licenses to produce, sell, and purchase goods deriving from anime characters is believed to be worth ten times more the one of creating anime alone (Steinberg, 2012: 45). Moreover, product placement has in recent years proved to be an efficient way of collecting budget for movie producers, television networks, record labels etc. Because of the development and growth of ad-skip technologies, along with numerous other factors, marketers and advertisers in the last few decades found themselves having to come up with new tactics to promote and advertise products and services. Product placement, that is the placing of products and brands within movies, television programs, radio, music videos, videogames and other mass media channels has been one of them and has now become an important emerging area of marketing and advertising

Firstly, the study will give an exhaustive description of what product placement is and how it works. In order to do so, an accurate definition of product placement, especially regarding its differences with traditional forms of advertisement and subliminal publicity, is provided. Then, a brief historical outline of product placement is illustrated. After that, product placement characteristics are explained, focusing on the multidimensional features of modality, prominence and plot connection. Finally, a number of existing studies are reviewed in order to understand the effects of product placement on viewers, including psychological