Abstract
m e ob'ective of tbis study was to examine the impac! of a speciiic type 01 single-advehser publication on physicians perceptions of thc sponsoring pharmaceutical compy and on the frequency with which they expect to prescribe the sponsor's product Four hardcover bwks dealing with a medical issue or personality and containing 18 pages of advertising for the sponsoring company's broad-specm antibiotic were mailed at 2-month inlewals to 19,2W physicians who were targeted by y e spomringcompany. Randomly selected groups ol 1,200 physictans were maled questionnaires and $5 chec& at the base point and I man* $ter each hook was mailed. Qucsuon are@ focused on (he hyslaan's ability tocorreclly idenlify rhe sponsonngpharmaceutlc&wpany, whether each book pictured in the questiomaire was received, how each hook was read, and how the book(s) was (were) rated a five ataibutes. The data fmm readers were analyzed ar$ contrasted with the data from two c m o l groups lo detemune the Impact that the bmks had on the attribute ratings of she sponsoring company and expected changes in Ule number of prescriptions of the sponsoring wmpany's broad-sp?cuum antibiotic. The results clearly showed that the reading of a1 least one of the fnu single-adveliiser hardcover books had a substantial impact on physicim' perceptions of the sponsoring company and on the Frequency with which physicians expected to prescribe the sponsoring company's anbbiouc. Moreover, post hoc analyses indicated that the results cannot be atmbuted ta sales force activity or to a response bias on the part of the readers and that the magnitude of the effects increased with increasing exposure to the books and their advertising.
