Direct-to-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising: Building and Testing a Model for Advertising Effectiveness
Rick T. WilsonHofstra UniversityBrian D. TillSaint Louis UniversityINTRODUCTION
Pharmaceutical companies spend in the neighborhood of $2.6 billion a year on the advertising and promotion of prescription drugs (Thomaselli and Teinowitz, 2004). In fact, it appears that mass-market advertising has become a necessity rather than a luxury for many pharmaceutical companies as massive research and development costs and an increasingly competitive marketplace have forced companies to spend enormous sums of money on promotion to quickly gain market share before patents expire (Crain, 2005...