The impact of product placement on TV-induced tourism: Korean TV dramas and Taiwanese viewers

This study examines of the ways in which Korean TV dramas affect Taiwanese consumers’ attitudes toward the locations where the dramas are filmed (onscreen locations). Previous studies have incorporated balance theory into product–character association models and have demonstrated that consumers tend to align their attitudes toward products with the valence of a character’s attitudes toward the products. Unlike previous studies, this article attempts to investigate the product–character association model in a cross-cultural setting where the ‘products’ considered are the onscreen locations. To account for the effect of similarity between Taiwanese culture and Korean culture, the concept of perceived cultural proximity is introduced into the balance-theory-based model. The results show that consumers’ parasocial relationships with a character and consumers’ attitudes toward the character are related to their attitudes toward the location. However, this relationship is significant only for those viewers with high perceived cultural proximity between Taiwan and Korea.