Prescription Drug Advertising: Recall and Patient Behavior

摘要

Direct to Consumer Advertising(DTCA)of prescription drugs has its fair share of critics.Among the issues of contention are what balance of risk and benefit information is adequate,and to what extent DTCA impacts the physician-patient relationship.This paper broadly examined two questions: What level of risk disclosure leads to the most recall? What types of patients ask doctors to prescribe advertised drugs? The moderating role of involvement was also examined.An experiment was conducted with print ad stimuli.Three versions of prescription drug ads containing different amounts of risk information(high,moderate,low)were developed based on FDA guidelines and shown to participants in a 3 x 3 between group design.203 participants were involved.Measures taken included involvement,attitude toward the ad and brand interest.What participants recalled from the ads were assessed via the"any recall"approach where participants were asked to write on a blank page of the questionnaire,a numbered list of any characteristics of the ad they remembered.The researcher coded each participant's responses into risk information recall and benefit information recall.Participants'behaviors in relation to DTC advertising were assessed with items adapted from Huh(2003).