Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
that ads lack clarity especially regarding risk information (e.g., Calfee et al.
2002
).
Also most critics emphasize that although ads increase awareness of consumers,
thus being to a certain extent informational, they are not educational enough and
tend to favor benefits at the expense of prevalence and risk information (e.g., Frosch
et al.
2007
). Patients also agree that ads mostly make drugs seem better than they are
(e.g., Berndt
2005
). In fairness to pharmaceutical advertisers, in particular in the
case of the TV medium, it would be very difficult to produce a fully educational
message that would satisfy all stakeholders. However, given the mostly market
expansion effects of DTCA, more information about the disease, conditions, and
symptoms with a good balance of risk information may lead to long-term benefits
for both patients and firms thus producing to social welfare.
There have also been calls for more evidenced-based information in ads (e.g.,
Hollon
2005
), which could benefit both pharmaceutical advertisers and patients as
it would lead to better choices for the latter, thus rewarding the most innovative of
the former. However, provision of such type of information in DTCA messages
requires closer monitoring and reviewing, which has been an Achilles heel for FDA.
Donohue et al. (
2007
) provide an interesting discussion of data showing a decline in
the number of regulatory letters sent by FDA to pharmaceutical advertisers. The
authors attribute this mostly to staffing issues, resulting in inadequate monitoring,
rather than increased compliance with regulations by the pharmaceutical firms.
Given the risk generated from potential advertising misinformation in this case, a
closer monitoring of the situation could again benefit all stakeholders.
22.4
DTCA vs. DTP
A comparison of the effectiveness of DTCA and DTP activities could provide fur-
ther insights into the overall influence of DTCA and, consequently, of consumers on
drug prescriptions. With free-sampling and detailing still enjoying the lion's share
of pharmaceutical expenditures (e.g., Donohue et al.
2007
), the “niche” effect of
DTCA mainly on market expansion may be well-justified and expected. Two stud-
ies have undertaken the task of investigating the effectiveness of both DTCA and
DTP efforts on a large scale. The first is the meta-analysis by Kremer et al. (
2008
)
and the second is the study by Fischer and Albers (
2010
) on category effects of
pharmaceutical marketing activities. The latter is not meta-analytic but uses a large
number of therapeutic categories (86 accounting for 85 % of the US pharmaceutical
market) and controls for methodology, as the same is applied to all data.
The evidence in Kremer et al. (
2008
) clearly suggests that DTCA elasticities are
much smaller than detailing elasticities. The average predicted elasticity for DTCA is
0.073, whereas for detailing is 0.326. DTP advertising (physician journal) elasticity is
also greater than that of DTCA at 0.123. Fischer and Albers (
2010
) propose a “cor-
rected” form of the category-level market response model and corresponding elastici-
ties, from which competitive interaction effects are removed and find that even in terms
of market expansion detailing is more effective than DTCA, challenging previous
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