Physician response to contextualized price-comparison claims in prescription drug advertising^*

ABSTRACT

Physician-targeted prescription drug advertisements sometimes include price comparisons between products that may misleadingly imply equivalence of efficacy and safety or misrepresent true savings, suggesting the potential utility of a context statement to explain what the claims do and do not mean.

We manipulated the presence of a price claim and a context statement in a 1 × 3 (control condition, price-comparison-only, price-comparison-plus-context) between-subjects design. Physicians (N = 1438), randomly assigned to condition, viewed the prescription drug ad and answered a brief survey. Primary outcome measures included recognition, perceived importance, and impact of the price-comparison claim, and recognition, understanding, and effectiveness of the context statement.

The majority of physicians accurately recognized the price claim (76.0%) but far fewer accurately recognized the associated context statement (44.9%). The context statement did not affect evaluations of the price-comparison claim importance or accuracy and did not have the intended effects on perceptions of uncertainty about drug interchangeability. Physicians may be affected by price-comparison claims in thinking that the drug has risks that are relatively less severe. Price-comparison claims also affected intentions to look for information about the drug.

Adding a realistic context statement to a physician-targeted prescription drug ad did not generate sufficient awareness of claim caveats to differentiate price-comparison response of those exposed to the context statement from those who were not.

KEYWORDS:

• Risk communication
• health communication
• pharmaceutical decision making
• disclosure
• prescription drug
• advertising as topic
• price comparisons

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Kayla Gray and Maria Ashbaugh of RTI International for creating the fictitious drug advertisements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics approval

The study presented in this article was provided an exemption from FDA’s Research Involving Human Subjects Committee under 45 CFR 46.101(b)(2). All participants provided their informed consent to participate in the research.

Notes on contributors

Kevin R. Betts is a Social Science Analyst in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion, where he provides research and consulting services pertaining to prescription drug communications.

Kathryn J. Aikin is a Senior Social Science Analyst and the Research Team Lead in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion. Dr. Aikin’s research has focused on topics related to promotion of prescription drugs.

Vanessa Boudewyns is a Social Scientist in RTI International’s Center for Communication Science. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of message design and health behavior prediction and change.

Mihaela Johnson is a Social Scientist in RTI International’s Center for Communication Science whose research focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of communication strategies and health messages in the media environment.

Alex Stine is a doctoral student with Duke University’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. Previously, he was an analyst in RTI International’s Center for Communication Science.

Brian G. Southwell directs the Science in the Public Sphere program in the Center for Communication Science at RTI International. He also is a faculty member at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

ORCID

Kathryn J. Aikin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0244-6607

Vanessa Boudewyns http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1777-290X

Alex Stine http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7366-4180

Notes

* This article reflects the views of the authors and should not be construed to represent FDA’s views or policies.

1 Lyrica was chosen because it is also indicated for treatment of diabetic neuropathy.

2 Full size high-definition copies of stimuli from all experimental conditions are available by request directed to the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by the Office of Prescription Drug Promotion, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration.