Biomedical Engineering Reference
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that DTCA has a positive effect on compliance (Donohue and Berndt 2004 ;
Wosinska 2005 ) and therapy initiation (Bradford et al. 2010 ; Donohue and Berndt
2004 ). Wosinska ( 2005 ) and Donohue and Berndt ( 2004 ) used claims data and
Stremersch et al. ( 2012 ) and Bradford et al. ( 2010 ) panel data allowing for
individual-level analyses. In fact, Stremersch et al. ( 2012 ) integrate three different
databases including physician-level panel data, promotional spending, and US
Census information in order to investigate the role of physician specialty and spatial
characteristics (e.g., race, income, education, age, urbanization) on drug requests.
Their study suggests that both spatial characteristics and physician specialty have
influence on the number of patient requests. Specifically, specialists receive more
drug requests but these are not necessarily translated into prescriptions particularly
when compared to the requests to the primary care physicians. Moreover, requests
occur more frequently in designated market areas (DMA) with minorities; however,
similar to the case with specialists requests from minorities translate less into pre-
scriptions. Cox et al. ( 2010 ) investigate patients' interpretation of the risk disclosure
in product claim ads and the moderating role of media-context and media-induced
mood on their response to information such as the frequency and severity of the
product risk. Their findings indicate patients in positive media-induced moods (e.g.,
via use of pleasant images, up-beat music) more carefully evaluate the risk-related
information when forming product use intentions when compared to patients not in
positive affective stage who tend to overestimate the likelihood of adverse effects.
There has been very little research on the effect of the different types of DTCA
messages (help-seeking, reminder and product claim), although they provide a very
good opportunity for testing whether DTCA effects are constructive or combative.
This may be due to the fact that, at least in the USA, most ads are of the product
claim variety (e.g., Lee-Wingate and Xie 2010 ). The study by Kolsarici and
Vakratsas ( 2010 ) is the only one that addresses this issue from an econometric per-
spective. Analyzing drug sales and pharmaceutical expenditures for the pioneering
drug in a newly established category, they compare the effectiveness of help-seeking
and reminder advertising, likening the former to a category message and the latter
to a brand-specific message. They find that help-seeking ads are more effective in
the beginning of the product life cycle as they inform a potentially large untapped
market. However, as competition enters and the market matures, reminder ads
become more effective. Overall, reminder advertising has a slightly higher elasticity
than help-seeking advertising but both are low (0.038 vs. 0.053), consistent with
most other econometric studies (Kolsarici and Vakratsas 2010 ). Lee-Wingate and
Xie ( 2010 ) compare product claim and help-seeking ads in an experimental setting
and find that the latter is more effective in terms of generating stronger behavioral
intention to seek treatments for the ailments advertised.
The informational content of DTCA, and in particular the amount of brand-
related information contained in DTCA messages, has also been the subject of two
game-theoretic studies. Amaldoss and He ( 2009 ) use a “brand specificity” parame-
ter to capture the degree of brand-related information in DTCA messages and find
that it has an inverted-U shaped relationship with profits. A moderate degree of
brand specificity helps a firm to differentiate and avoid free-riding, but a very high
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