HOW DO DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER DRUG ADVERTISEMENTS MEASURE UP?

poster abstractPrior to the 1980's, it was illegal for prescription drug manufacturers in the United States to advertise directly to consumers. Instead, these compa-nies only advertised to medical professionals. Several prescription drug companies began direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising during the 1980s. However, this advertising faced strict limitations from the Food and Drug Administration. However, in 1997, the FDA relaxed some of these limita-tions, and DTC advertising began to grow rapidly. By 2009, drug companies' expenditures on DTC advertising had grown to $4.5 billion. Nonetheless, DTC advertisements continue to face criticism. One criticism of direct-to-consumer advertisements is that product benefit and risk information is of-ten not communicated clearly to consumers, e.g., that the ads contain inad-equate information regarding risks, or vague descriptions of medication ben-efits. The present study seeks to assess the merits of these criticisms. This research is being conducted in two stages. First, secondary research is being conducted to determine what other researchers have concluded re-garding the representation of risk and benefit information in direct-to-consumer advertisements. Past studies have examined several aspects of DTC ads, including the balance between benefit and risk information, and the specificity of the information expressed. Second, primary research will be conducted, in which current DTC advertisements will be content-analyzed. This research will involve collecting DTC advertisements, develop-ing a system of coding the information in these ads, and assessing and cri-tiquing the ways in which product benefits and risks are presented to con-sumers through such advertisements

Communicating the Consequences of Early Detection:The Role of Evidence and Framing

Despite the enormous benefits of early-detection products, consumers are reluctant to use them. The authors explore this reluctance, testing alternative approaches to communicating the consequences of detection behaviors. The results suggest that anecdotal messages are more involving than statistical messages and that positive anecdotes (about gains from screening) are less persuasive than negative anecdotes (about the losses from failing to get screened); positive anecdotes appear to cause a “boomerang” effect. The authors discuss implications for promoting consumer risk-reduction behaviors

What Does Familiarity Breed? Complexity as a Moderator of Repetition Effects in Advertisement Evaluation

This article examines how consumers' attitudes toward advertisements are affected by their previous exposure to them. The results of our experiment suggest that the effects of exposure on ad attitudes may be moderated by the complexity of the advertisement: evaluations of complex ads become more positive with exposure, while those of simple ads do not. This finding may help explain why previous studies of ad exposure effects have yielded mixed results

To Err is Human? How Typographical and Orthographical Errors Affect Perceptions of Online Reviewers

Consumers increasingly rely on online product reviews when making purchase decisions. However, assessing the credibility of online reviewers presents consumers with unique challenges. This paper examines how consumer perceptions of reviewer credibility are influenced by the presence and type of textual errors in the review itself. The results of an online experiment indicate that consumers’ reactions to textual errors are moderated by their general trust in others. Low-trust consumers are relatively insensitive to textual errors in judging reviewer credibility. However, high-trust consumers are less forgiving of typographical errors (which may signal carelessness) than orthographical errors (which may indicate cognitive challenges). Implications for future research are discussed

When Consumer Behavior Goes Bad: An Investigation of Adolescent Shoplifting

Shoplifting is a troubling and widespread aspect of consumer behavior, particularly among adolescents, yet it has attracted little attention from consumer researchers. This article reports and interprets findings on the pervasiveness of shoplifting among adolescents, the characteristics that distinguish adolescent shoplifters from their nonshoplifting peers, and adolescents' views regarding the reasons for this behavior. Our findings contradict some popular stereotypes concerning the typical shoplifter and suggest some rethinking about adolescents' reasons for shoplifting

The Effect of Background Music on Ad Processing: A Contingency Explanation

Music is an increasingly prominent and expensive feature of broadcast ads, yet its effects on message reception are controversial. The authors propose and test a contingency that may help resolve this controversy. Experimental results suggest that message reception is influenced by the interplay of two musical properties: attention-gaining value and music-message congruency. Increasing audience attention to music enhances message reception when the music evokes message-congruent (versus incongruent) thoughts

Understanding Consumer Responses to Product Risk Information

Two experiments examine how message framing moderates consumer responses to product risk information. The findings suggest that contrary to an influential theory, consumers exposed to loss-framed messages exhibit a general aversion to product risk involving both short-term adverse effects and more permanent harm. In contrast, consumers exposed to gain-framed messages differentiate among different types of product risk. They essentially ignore temporary product risks but give considerable decisional weight to risks of permanent harm. This article discusses the implications of these findings for those who design and regulate promotional messages that contain product risk disclosures

Consumer Response to Drug Risk Information:The Role of Positive Affect

Risk disclosure is an essential element of the marketing of prescription drugs and other medical products. This study examines how consumers respond to verbal information about the frequency and severity of medical-product risks and how media-induced affect can moderate such responses. The study finds that consumers tend to overestimate the actual likelihood of adverse events described with words such as “common” or “rare” (compared with the probabilities such terms are typically intended to convey) and that consumers tend to give little weight to such probability language when forming product use intentions. However, consumers in positive media-induced moods seem to engage in more nuanced evaluation of product risk information, weighing both frequency and severity information and using such information to make inferences about other product attributes (e.g., product efficacy). These findings suggest that medical marketers and regulators need to devise more effective means of communicating risk probability to consumers and that positive mood induction (e.g., by placing advertisements in upbeat media environments) can enhance consumers' ability to process product risk information

IUPUI Center for HPV Research: Effects of a Brief Health Messaging Intervention on HPV Vaccine Acceptability among Parents of Adolescent Sons

poster abstractBackground: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is an very common infection that is a primary cause of warts and many cancers, including cervical, anal, vaginal, vulvar, penile, and head and neck cancers. In an effort to address the problems associated with HPV infection and prevention, the Center for HPV Research at IUPUI (Zimet & Fortenberry, Co-Directors) fosters collaboration among investigators from multiple disciplines and departments at IUPUI, IU Bloomington, Purdue University, and University of Notre Dame. There currently are 25 faculty and 7 pre- and post-doctoral trainees who are members of the Center. The Center for HPV Research was established in July, 2012 with funds from the IUPUI Signature Center Initiative, The Department of Pediatrics, and the IU Simon Cancer Center. In this abstract we highlight a study representing a collaboration among 5 center members, including our current center-supported post-doc. Objectives: HPV vaccination coverage remains very low among adolescent males in the U.S. We explored the effect of brief Web-based health messages on parents’ willingness to vaccinate their sons against HPV. Methods: A U.S. national sample of parents of 11-17-year-old sons (N=779) completed a Web-based survey assessing attitudes and behaviors related to HPV vaccination. Parents of non-vaccinated sons (79% of the sample) were randomized to a two-level normalizing message (NM) condition: no message vs. NM (“Millions of doses of the vaccine have been administered to adolescent girls in the US at this time.”) and a three-level protection message (PM) condition: no message vs. son-only PM (“The HPV vaccine can protect your son from most kinds of genital warts and anal cancers,”) vs. son+partner PM (son-only message plus “If your son gets vaccinated it can also protect his future spouse from genital warts and cancer.”). Parents then reported willingness to vaccinate their sons against HPV on a scale of 1-100. Intervention effects were analyzed using a 2×3 between-subjects ANOVA. Results: Mean willingness was 55.2 (SD=29.7). A significant interaction was found between health messaging conditions, F(2,576) = 3.17, p = 0.043). Parents receiving the son-only PM reported significantly lower willingness if they received the NM vs. no NM (p=.014). Parents receiving no NM reported significantly higher willingness if they received the son + partner PM vs. no PM (p=.029). Conclusions: Reading brief online health messages affected parents’ willingness to vaccinate their adolescent sons against HPV. Overall, presenting normalizing information pertaining to adolescent females (for whom routine immunization was first recommended) appeared to lower parent willingness to vaccinate their adolescent sons. Presenting information about protecting their son and/or son’s partner against HPV-associated outcomes appeared to increase parent willingness to vaccinate in the absence of such normalizing information