Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals: An Integrative Review - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 634

Table 21.3 DTCA elasticities reported in the literature
Authors Year Short-term DTCA elasticity Long-term DTCA elasticity

Berndt et al. 1995 0.008 0.053

Calfee et al. 2002 - -

Wittink 2002 0.004 -

Wosinska 2002 0.032 -

Rosenthal et al. 2003 0.091-0.114 -

Narayanan et al. 2004 0.023

Iizuka and Jin 2005 0.014-0.024 0.031-0.053

Fischer and Albers 2010 0.01 0.074

Liu and Gupta 2011 0.012 0.03

estimated in a recent meta-analysis of consumer product markets to be 0.12 and the
average long-term elasticity to be 0.24 (Sethuraman et al. 2011 ). Sethuraman et al.
( 2011 ) point out that their estimates of advertising elasticities are signifi cantly
smaller than those reported in earlier meta-analyses. In Table 21.3 , the short-term
DTCA elasticity averages about 0.02 with a range of 0.01-0.11. The long-term
DTCA elasticity averages about 0.05 with a range of 0.03-0.07. We recognize that
there are many conceptual and methodological challenges in comparing elasticities
across studies. Notwithstanding these, it is striking that the reported DTCA elastici-
ties are squarely in the lower half of the distribution of advertising elasticities. This
is unsurprising given the very different role of consumer advertising, as well as
lower importance relative to marketing to physicians, in driving prescription drug
sales. This is an important consideration in the determination of the marketing mix
for prescription drugs, a question we return to subsequently.
Our review of the literature indicates that several interesting and important questions
related to DTCA remain unexplored or underexplored. We divide our discussion of
these questions into two broad domains: demand side and supply side.
Demand side

(a) We believe there is considerable room to understand better the heterogeneity in
patient responsiveness to DTCA using market data. Liu and Gupta ( 2011 ) study
differences in responsiveness of insurance groups. Another important variable
of interest is severity of condition. A commonly heard critique of DTCA is that
it attracts patients with less severe affl ictions to the physician's offi ce, and
further, these patients receive drug treatment as a result of requests they make
of their physicians, when in fact they are not ideal candidates for medication.
This important question has not, to our knowledge, been empirically examined.
In addition to patient types, future researchers might also want to examine how
DTCA in different media impacts potential patients differently. Liu and Gupta
( 2011 ) fi nd, for instance, that DTCA in print vs. TV infl uences patients from
different insurance groups differently.

Another relevant question related to patient heterogeneity deals with the impact
of DTCA on patient requests. Stremersch and van Dyck ( 2009 ) note that prior
research shows differences based on patient gender. Women have been found to be