Effect of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medications in an elderly population.

Abstract

This study examined the effect of "direct-to-consumer" advertising of prescription drug products on elderly consumers. Specifically, the study examined the effects of the promotion and information content of an ad on elderly consumers' product attitudes and risk perceptions. The study had a two (involvement: high or low) by two (argument quality: strong or weak) by two (source credibility: high or low) design based on the theoretical concepts of the Elaboration Likelihood Model; a general model of attitude change that provides a comprehensive framework for organizing and understanding the underlying processes of persuasive communications. The study plan involved randomly assigning a group of elderly consumers (N = 136) to each of the experimental conditions and exposing them to an advertisement for a fictitious prescription drug. After reviewing the advertisement, subjects responded to a set of questions measuring their attitudes toward the advertisement and the product, behavioral intentions to use the product, and perceived risk. Expectations were that the quality of information presented in the ad would have a greater impact under high involvement conditions (a two-way interaction effect between involvement and argument quality) and that source credibility would have a greater impact under the low involvement condition (a two-way interaction between involvement and source credibility). The study design also allowed for detection of three-way interaction effects between involvement, source credibility and argument quality. Analysis of the full data set revealed that neither of the hypothesized two-way interactions were statistically significant. However, an ANOVA of effects with a number of extreme observations removed showed a three-way interaction effect between involvement, source credibility and argument quality on attitudes toward the product (p = 0.02) and perceptions of risk (p = 0.1). Under high involvement conditions, subjects exposed to strong argument quality (low risk) messages generated more favorable attitudes toward the product and less perceived risk than subjects exposed to weak argument quality (high risk) messages. Under low involvement conditions, subjects exposed to strong argument quality (low risk) messages also generated more favorable product attitudes and less perceived risk, but only when exposed to a low credibility spokesperson.