Millennials, Media and Luxury Brands: The Role of Indulgence as a Cultural Dimension on the Brand Recall, Brand Attitude and Purchase Intention of Luxury Brands Featured in the Product Placement of Popular Online Music Videos

3 Abstract Nowadays, product placement is increasingly employed in modern media technologies with the aim of targeting global audiences. However, product placement messages may not appeal to all cultures equally, as culture is a complex construct, and is the primary reason why consumer behavior differs across countries. Still, it is frequently debated whether or not it is more effective to target advertising messages according to culture, or whether it is more effective to standardize advertising across cultures. An increasing amount of research suggests that businesses should take cultural differences into consideration when creating advertising messages. A popular model used in cross-cultural research, which is used to measure cultural differences, is Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and one of the most recent and least researched dimensions is the indulgence dimension. In order to assess how a cultural dimension can potentially influence the way individuals are affected by product placement, the primary objective of this research was; to discover how the indulgence level of millennials influences their brand recall, their purchase intention and their brand attitude of luxury brands featured in the product placements of online music videos. An additional aim was to assess whether the Netherlands, Turkey and Bulgaria were statistically different in their mean scores of the indulgence dimension to compare the scores of an indulgent, neutral and restrained country, and assess whether these scores reflect the scores provided by Hofstede. Finally, this research analyzed whether different countries (the Netherlands, Turkey & Bulgaria) vary in; their ability to recall brands, their purchase intention and their brand attitude, to better understand how different countries (with varying levels of indulgence) react to product placement. For this research, a quantitative survey was conducted. It was found that the extent of indulgence negatively influences millennials’ ability to recall luxury brands in popular Hip-Hop/R&B music videos, and positively influences millennials brand attitude of luxury brands in Hip-Hop/R&B music videos. The findings also suggest that the extent of indulgence does not influence millennials’ purchase intention. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that the Netherlands, Turkey and Bulgaria were statistically different in their mean scores of the indulgence dimension, but while there was a significant difference between the Netherlands and Bulgaria, and Turkey and Bulgaria, no significant difference was found between the Netherlands and Turkey. Lastly, this research has shown that the three countries vary in their brand recall, brand attitude and purchase intention when shown product placement messages of luxury brands featured within online music videos. Bulgarian millennials recalled more luxury brands compared to Dutch and Turkish millennials, Turkish millennials had a higher intent to purchase in comparison to Dutch millennials, and Turkish millennials had a higher brand attitude compared to Bulgarian millennials. This research has made it apparent that it may be more effective to target advertising messages according to culture, in comparison to standardizing advertising messages across cultures. Also, this research demonstrated that an important direction for future research is to reassess Hofstede’s cultural dimensions as some of the findings did not accurately reflect what was predicted by the model.