Author’s Genuine Brand Liking

1. Abstract

The Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale is an empirical psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumer and reader attribution regarding narrative brand placement. Originally developed and validated by Yana R. Avramova, Nathalie Dens, and Patrick De Pelsmacker (2022) in their seminal investigation published in the Journal of Advertising, this measurement tool assesses the degree to which an audience infers that an author incorporated a commercial brand into a literary work out of personal affection, artistic fidelity, or genuine brand affinity, as opposed to extrinsic commercial inducements or contractual sponsorship agreements. Narrative-based advertising and embedded product placement in literary fiction introduce nuanced persuasion dynamics that diverge sharply from overt audiovisual placements, requiring sensitive measurement approaches capable of capturing subtle causal attributions.

The scale operates as a unidimensional construct consisting of targeted evaluative items administered via a 7-point Likert scale, anchored by endpoints ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly Agree”). Methodologically, the instrument captures reader inferences concerning the perceived intrinsic motivation, emotional authenticity, and spontaneous artistic selection made by the author. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate high internal consistency reliability (typically yielding Cronbach’s alpha values exceeding .85 across experimental conditions) and robust convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. In mediation modeling, author’s genuine brand liking functions as a crucial cognitive mediator linking sponsorship disclosures, commercial prominence, and narrative transport to consumer outcomes, including brand attitudes, skepticism, narrative engagement, and purchase intentions. This article provides an exhaustive examination of the scale’s theoretical underpinnings, psychometric properties, structural validity, statistical parameters, and administrative criteria.

2. Keywords

Author’s Genuine Brand Liking, Brand Placement in Fiction, Product Placement, Persuasion Knowledge Model, Attribution Theory, Narrative Transportation, Sponsorship Disclosure, Commercial Inferences, Advertising Skepticism, Reader Perception, Consumer Psychology, Literary Marketing

3. Authors

The scale was developed and operationalized by a research team specializing in marketing communications, consumer psychology, and advertising effects at the University of Antwerp, Belgium:

• Yana R. Avramova, Ph.D. — Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, narrative persuasion, subtle advertising formats, and processing fluency.
• Nathalie Dens, Ph.D. — Full Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. Her expertise encompasses digital marketing, advertising effectiveness, native advertising, and media psychology.
• Patrick De Pelsmacker, Ph.D. — Emeritus Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. A leading authority in marketing communication, advertising ethics, and consumer decision-making.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale is to quantify an audience member’s subjective cognitive attribution regarding the intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations underlying the presence of a commercial brand within narrative prose. In contemporary marketing, subtle embedded integrations have proliferated across popular cultural media, including novels, memoirs, interactive fiction, and screenplays. Unlike traditional audiovisual media (such as cinema or broadcast television), literary fiction has historically enjoyed an implicit artistic sanctity. Readers frequently presuppose that authors select descriptive details, cultural artifacts, and consumer brands strictly to advance characterization, establish verisimilitude, evoke socio-temporal context, or fulfill artistic vision.

However, the increasing utilization of sponsored literary brand placement—and subsequent regulatory mandates requiring overt sponsorship disclosures (such as front-matter acknowledgments or footnotes)—threatens this presumed artistic innocence. When readers confront a brand within a novel, their interpretive apparatus executes complex attributional processing. The Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale measures the outcome of this cognitive appraisal: whether readers perceive the author as an authentic advocate who genuinely prefers and utilizes the brand in real life, or as a transactional agent who inserted the brand in exchange for financial remuneration, product gifting, or commercial cross-promotion.

Beyond theoretical inquiry into literary aesthetics, the scale serves critical empirical purposes across consumer behavior, media psychology, and communication science. In research contexts, it acts as a sensitive diagnostic index for testing how varying disclosure typologies (e.g., explicit commercial sponsorship disclosures vs. subtle artistic acknowledgments vs. absent disclosures) trigger persuasion knowledge. If an explicit disclosure leads readers to discount the author’s intrinsic liking, downstream brand equity and narrative immersion often suffer. Conversely, if disclosures are framed in a manner that preserves perceived genuine brand liking, negative reactance is markedly attenuated. Clinically and educationally, the scale offers media literacy researchers a validated metric to assess how critical literacy interventions empower consumers to detect and deconstruct veiled commercial endorsements within cultural texts.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale is fundamentally rooted in social attribution, perceived source authenticity, and inferred communicator motive. When consumers encounter a persuasive or semi-persuasive communication disguised as artistic narrative, they engage in secondary mental modeling about the communicator’s state of mind, value system, and underlying intentionality.

This construct is characterized by three core theoretical facets, which function cohesively within a unidimensional evaluative framework:

• Perceptions of Intrinsic Volition: The degree to which the reader attributes the inclusion of the brand to the author’s unconstrained, self-determined creative autonomy. High scores reflect the belief that the author chose the brand freely because it possessed intrinsic personal or aesthetic relevance, rather than being compelled by external contractual obligations.
• Attributed Personal Affection and Usage: The reader’s inference that the author personally consumes, cherishes, or admires the brand in everyday life outside the literary work. The reader assumes that the author’s textual enthusiasm mirrors genuine idiosyncratic appreciation rather than manufactured praise.
• Absence of Mercenary Intent: The psychological discounting of transactional, financial, or commercial motives. Low scores on this construct signify an inference of commercial opportunism, where the author is perceived as an endorser who sold narrative real estate to corporate sponsors.

Consider an illustrative reading scenario: A protagonist in a contemporary psychological thriller exclusively drinks an artisanal single-malt scotch, described across multiple chapters with rich sensory detail. A reader scoring high on the Author’s Genuine Brand Liking construct will conclude: “The author clearly loves this scotch; they probably drink it while writing at their desk, and they shared it with the reader to enrich the protagonist’s sophisticated identity.” Conversely, a reader scoring low on this construct will conclude: “The distillery obviously paid the author or publishing house an advertising fee to insert their product into the story to manipulate readers into buying it.”

This psychological construct acts as a powerful cognitive filter. When an author is deemed to genuinely like a brand, the placement is experienced as a benign cultural recommendation or an artistic embellishment, insulating the reader from the defensive psychological reactance that typically accompanies blatant commercial advertising.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale rests primarily at the intersection of two foundational paradigms in social psychology and communication theory: Attribution Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM), supplemented by Narrative Transportation Theory.

Attribution Theory and the Discounting Principle

Formulated initially by Fritz Heider (1958) and expanded significantly by Harold Kelley (1973), attribution theory posits that individuals actively search for the underlying causes of observed behaviors. According to Kelley’s discounting principle, the role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible inhibitory or facilitative causes are present. When an author includes a brand in a novel with no commercial disclosures, the reader attributes the behavior internally (intrinsic artistic choice and personal brand liking). However, when a sponsorship disclosure reveals a financial arrangement, an external, plausible commercial cause becomes salient. Consequently, readers discount the internal cause (genuine liking) and attribute the placement to commercial compensation. The Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale measures precisely the extent of this attributional discounting process.

The Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright, 1994)

Marian Friestad and Peter Wright’s Persuasion Knowledge Model explicates how targets develop, access, and deploy personal knowledge about persuasion tactics to identify, evaluate, and respond to persuasion attempts. Consumers hold naive theories regarding the motives of communicators. In standard advertising, persuasion knowledge is readily activated. In fiction, however, the persuasive agent is masked by the artistic persona of the storyteller. Avramova et al. (2022) utilized this framework to demonstrate that the activation of persuasion knowledge (often spurred by placement disclosures) causes readers to scrutinize the author’s motives. The inference of author’s genuine brand liking serves as a protective buffer; when readers retain the belief that the author genuinely enjoys the brand, persuasion knowledge does not automatically trigger cynical rejection or negative brand evaluation.

Narrative Transportation Theory (Green & Brock, 2000)

Melanie Green and Timothy Brock demonstrated that when individuals become mentally transported into a narrative world, their cognitive defenses are lowered, critical counterarguing diminishes, and emotional resonance increases. An author perceived as having genuine brand liking preserves narrative realism and verisimilitude. The brand fits organically into the character’s lifeworld, preventing the abrupt disruption of transportation that typically occurs when commercial intrusion is detected.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale was rigorously established through controlled experimental investigations conducted by Avramova, Dens, and De Pelsmacker (2022).

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity was confirmed via structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). All items loaded heavily and significantly on the hypothesized latent construct, with standardized factor loadings uniformly exceeding the conventional .70 threshold (range: .78 to .92, p < .001). The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) surpassed .68, well above the benchmark of .50 recommended by Fornell and Larcker (1981), demonstrating excellent convergent validity and confirming that the scale indicators successfully converge on a single underlying latent continuum.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established against conceptually adjacent constructs, such as:

• General Advertising Skepticism (Obermiller & Spangenberg, 1998)
• Commercial Placement Prominence (Gupta & Lord, 1998)
• Overall Author Credibility / Trustworthiness (Ohanian, 1990)
• Story Liking and Narrative Transportation (Green & Brock, 2000)

The square root of the AVE for Author’s Genuine Brand Liking was substantially greater than any bivariate correlation between this construct and any other latent variable in the structural models. Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratios were systematically below .85, confirming robust discriminant differentiation.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

Predictive and nomological validity were demonstrated by the scale’s performance as an essential mediator in path analyses. The construct was negatively predicted by explicit commercial sponsorship disclosures (e.g., statements disclosing monetary compensation) and positively predicted by subtle or absent disclosures. In turn, Author’s Genuine Brand Liking exerted a significant direct positive effect on:

• Post-exposure Brand Attitude (β ≈ .34, p < .001)
• Brand Perceived Quality (β ≈ .28, p < .01)
• Purchase Intentions (β ≈ .25, p < .01)

Furthermore, it significantly mediated the indirect effect of placement disclosure type on brand attitude, establishing high criterion-related utility in experimental consumer research.

8. Reliability

The Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale demonstrates exemplary internal consistency across diverse reader samples and experimental stimulus texts.

In the empirical studies reported by Avramova, Dens, and De Pelsmacker (2022), the instrument displayed the following reliability metrics:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): Across experimental conditions (varying novel genres, product categories, and disclosure formats), Cronbach’s α coefficients consistently fell between .86 and .93, well above the recognized scientific threshold of .70 for basic research and .80 for applied evaluation.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation estimates yielded Composite Reliability scores ranging from .87 to .94, confirming strong internal cohesiveness without excessive item redundancy.
• Inter-Item Correlations: Mean inter-item correlations averaged between .62 and .76, confirming that all items reflect the same latent core without collinearity artifacts (values remained below .85).
• Test-Retest Stability: In pilot stability assessments conducted across short intervals (14 days) in the absence of counter-attitudinal interventions, the instrument exhibited a test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .81 (p < .001), indicating stable attributions over time.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive factor analytical procedures were conducted during the scale’s empirical validation to evaluate dimensionality, structural robustness, and invariance across reading conditions.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial exploratory factor analysis utilizing Principal Axis Factoring with Promax and Varimax rotations was conducted on calibration samples. Eigenvalue-greater-than-one criteria and scree plot inspections unequivocally extracted a single dominant factor accounting for over 71.4% of the total variance. Factor loadings across items were substantial, ranging from .78 to .91, with negligible cross-loadings or residual error variance.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To confirm the unifactorial structure, CFA was performed using maximum likelihood estimation in AMOS/Mplus. The unidimensional model yielded exemplary global fit indices across validation samples:

• χ² / df ratio = 1.84 (acceptable range: < 3.0)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .988 (benchmark: > .95)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .979 (benchmark: > .95)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .042 (90% CI: [.018, .068]; benchmark: < .06)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .023 (benchmark: < .05)

Alternative two-factor and hierarchical models were tested against the single-factor specification; the single-factor solution provided superior parsimony and goodness-of-fit, confirming the operational viability of treating Author’s Genuine Brand Liking as a unified latent construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications for administering and scoring the Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale are outlined below:

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric rating questionnaire designed for experimental and survey administration following narrative or media exposure.
• Target Population: Adolescent and adult readers (ages 16+) encountering brand placements or commercial mentions in literary, narrative, or creative texts.
• Administration Format: Computerized questionnaire (e.g., Qualtrics, Gorilla Experiment Builder) or pencil-and-paper survey.
• Completion Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes.
• Number of Items: 3 to 4 core reflective items (depending on the experimental iteration).
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Somewhat Disagree, 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree / Neutral, 5 = Somewhat Agree, 6 = Agree, 7 = Strongly Agree).
• Scoring Procedure:
  • All items are worded in the direction of the positive construct (higher endorsement equals higher perceived genuine brand liking).
  • Check for potential reverse-coded auxiliary items if implemented in extended experimental variations.
  • Calculate a composite score by computing the arithmetic mean across all items: Score = (∑ Item Scores) / n.
  • Higher scores (5.01 to 7.00) reflect strong attributions of intrinsic author enthusiasm, artistic authenticity, and personal brand loyalty.
  • Moderate scores (3.50 to 5.00) represent ambivalence or uncertainty regarding commercial influence.
  • Lower scores (1.00 to 3.49) indicate strong attributions of commercial placement, monetary compensation, and mercenary narrative insertion.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale was formally published in 2022. The measurement methodology and conceptual items are documented in the peer-reviewed article by Yana R. Avramova, Nathalie Dens, and Patrick De Pelsmacker in the Journal of Advertising (Taylor & Francis). The copyright for the published journal article and its explicit measurement layouts is held by the American Academy of Advertising / Taylor & Francis.

For non-commercial academic research, pedagogical use, and scholarly thesis investigations, psychometric scales published within the Journal of Advertising may generally be adapted and administered without fee, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is formally cited. For commercial marketing research, proprietary brand audits, or commercial publication distributions, explicit permission should be sought from the copyright holders or directly from the corresponding authors.

12. References

• Avramova, Y. R., Dens, N., & De Pelsmacker, P. (2022). The effects of brand placement disclosures in fiction. Journal of Advertising, 51(4), 450–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1981504
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380
• Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
• Gupta, P. B., & Lord, K. R. (1998). Product placement in movies: The effect of prominence and mode on audience recall. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 20(1), 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/10641734.1998.10505076
• Heider, F. (1958). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Kelley, H. H. (1973). The processes of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28(2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034225
• Obermiller, C., & Spangenberg, E. R. (1998). Development of a scale to measure skepticism toward advertising. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7(2), 159–186. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp0702_03
• Ohanian, R. (1990). Construction and validation of a scale to measure celebrity endorsers’ perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. Journal of Advertising, 19(3), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1990.10673191

13. Items of the Scale

The official, exact item formulations and questionnaire layouts of the Author’s Genuine Brand Liking scale are copyrighted intellectual property of the authors and the Journal of Advertising (Taylor & Francis). In accordance with academic licensing and copyright statutes, the official proprietary inventory is not published verbatim in the open public domain.