Impact of Disease-Specific Direct-To-Consumer Advertising on Reminding Consumers to Take Their Medication: An Exploratory Study

Objective : The objective of this study is to assess the impact of attention paid to the advertisement, disease state involvement, and previous responsiveness to direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) on reminding consumers to take their prescription medications.

Methods : Data were gathered for 514 respondents (ages 18 years and older) using online surveys. Participants were exposed to disease-specific (i.e., nonbranded) DTCA for depression. The advertising stimulus created for the study was based on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines for disease-specific DTCA and modeled after current print disease-specific DTCAs. Participants reviewed the advertising stimulus and then responded to a questionnaire containing closed-ended questions for the constructs.

Results : Data were analyzed using chi-square tests. All tests were interpreted at an a priori alpha of 0.05. Significantly more respondents who were highly involved, paid more attention to the ad, and were responsive to DTCA in the past indicated that seeing the disease-specific DTCA stimulus reminded them to take their antidepressant and other medications.

Conclusion : Results of this research strongly support that disease-specific DTCA helps in reminding patients to take their prescription medications. This implies DTCA campaigns potentially can help improve medication adherence and thus lead to improved health outcomes, quality of life, and reduced burden on the health care system. Increase in medication adherence among patients also can result in increased revenue for the pharmaceutical industry in general. Additionally, given the fair balance and legal issues surrounding the product-specific DTCA, disease-specific DTCAs can serve as an effective component of the marketing mix for the pharmaceutical manufacturers. Future research should attempt to study the effect of disease-specific DTCA on patients' actual medication adherence using standardized adherence measures.