Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertisements Can Paradoxically Increase Intentions to Adopt Lifestyle Changes

Area of Science:

• Health Communication
• Consumer Psychology
• Pharmaceutical Marketing

Background:

• Direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertisements may cause 'boomerang effects,' diminishing the perceived value of lifestyle changes.
• Previous studies used artificial, text-only ads, which may not reflect real-world television advertisement complexities.
• Individual 'problem status' often moderates boomerang effects in other risk domains.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if real DTC television advertisements elicit boomerang effects on perceptions of lifestyle change.
• To investigate if individual problem status moderates any observed boomerang effects.

Main Methods:

• Utilized real, aired DTC television advertisements to naturally portray lifestyle change.
• Randomized 819 US adults (via Amazon Mechanical Turk) to view or not view a prescription drug ad.
• Assessed perceptions of lifestyle change versus drugs on effectiveness, disease severity, and personal intention.

Main Results:

• Advertisement exposure caused a weak, statistically significant boomerang effect on general effectiveness.
• No significant effect on disease severity scores was observed.
• Exposure led to a reverse boomerang effect on personal intentions, favoring lifestyle change over drugs.

Conclusions:

• Real DTC television ads produced weaker boomerang effects than artificial stimuli.
• Unexpectedly, real ads increased personal intentions for lifestyle change compared to drugs.
• Findings suggest potential roles for descriptive norms and self-efficacy, warranting further investigation into ad content manipulation.