전문의약품 소비자광고가 소비자행동에 미치는 영향 (The Impact of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising on Consumer Behavior)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국소비자학회
· 수록지 정보 : 소비자학연구 / 22권 / 3호 / 159 ~ 181페이지
· 저자명 : 양혜경

초록

소비자의 건강과 의료서비스에 대한 관심이 증가하면서 의료서비스 시장에서 소비자의 자발적인 역할이 커지는가운데 소비자를 대상으로 하는 전문의약품 소비자광고(Direct-to-Consumer Advertising)에 대한 관심 또한 커지고 있다. 전문의약품 소비자광고의 도입에 대한 논란이 일고 있는 가운데 아직까지 관련 연구가 국내에 전무하여도입을 논의하는데 어려움이 있고, 전문의약품 소비자광고가 소비자에 미치는 영향에 대한 학술적인 근거가 충분하지 않아 본 연구는 전문의약품 소비자광고가 활성화된 미국의 사례를 분석하여 한국에의 시사점을 찾고자 하였다.
구체적으로 본 연구는 고지혈증 치료제 광고의 사례를 통하여 광고 노출이 소비자의 건강관련행동에 미치는 영향을알아보고자 하였다. 전문의약품 소비자광고가 활발하게 나타난 2000년에서 2004년 사이에 미국 소비자를 대상으로 한 연구 결과, 소비자의 전문의약품 소비자광고 노출이 높아질 수록 소비자들이 병원을 방문하여 검사를 받고고지혈증 진단을 받을 확률이 높아졌으나 고지혈증 진단을 받은 사람들이 광고의 영향을 받고 고지혈증 치료제를구매하는 근거는 발견되지 않았다. 오히려 광고 노출이 높아질수록 식이조절, 규칙적인 운동 등 생활습관을 변화시킬 확률이 높아졌다. 본 연구 결과 전문의약품 소비자광고가 소비자의 선택과 건강관련행동에 영향을 미칠 수 있다는 것이 밝혀졌으며, 따라서 전문의약품 소비자광고의 도입을 위해서는 광고가 소비자에게 보다 이해하기 쉽고, 질병과 치료법, 의약품에 대한 포괄적이고 균형잡힌 정보를 제공할 수 있도록 광고 내용에 대한 구체적인 규제가 필요하다. 더불어 소비자교육을 통하여 소비자가 의약품의 위험과 효익에 대한 정보를 쉽게 이해하여 효율적인 의사결정을 내릴 수 있도록 뒷받침이 요구된다.

영어초록

Consumers are placing greater emphasis on their health and on health care services and are making decisions more independently of their health care providers. However, consumers are often deprived of information that they need in order to make effective decisions. There is a growing interest in the Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) in Korea as a way of providing more information to consumers. Since DTCA is only allowed in the U.S. and New Zealand, this paper studies how DTCA affects consumer behavior using cholesterol reducing drug “statins”advertising in the U.S.. It also finds implications for adopting DTCA in Korea.
Unless tested specifically for cholesterol, it takes years before elevated blood cholesterol levels may result in any symptoms. As a result, the dissemination of information about the risks of elevated blood cholesterol levels plays a key role in prevention. There are numerous sources of information from which consumers can learn about the risks and the treatment of high blood cholesterol. This study focuses on the role of prescription drug advertising on consumer awareness of their blood cholesterol level. It also examines whether, among those who have been diagnosed with high blood cholesterol, there is any additional impact of advertising on the purchase of statins. In addition, since the Clinical Practice Guidelines in the U.S. for cholesterol control recommends physicians to prescribe therapeutic lifestyle changes prior to prescribing statins, this study also examines whether DTCA leads consumers to healthier behaviors such as controlling diet and exercising regularly.
There have been a number of studies that have focused on the impact of DTCA. However,most of the existing literature examines the effect of DTCA on pharmaceutical demand. Iizuka and Jun (2007) report that DTCA of cholesterol reducing drugs tends to decrease the likelihood of engaging in moderate exercise, which suggests DTCA encourages people to substitute away from healthy lifestyles. Including Iizuka and Jin (2007) most studies on the impact of DTCA used aggregate-level DTCA data which makes them difficult to accurately measure individual level variation in advertising exposure and establish causal impact of advertising.
This study builds up on the existing literature by utilizing unique data sets that combine extensive survey data on statins use with an archive of advertisements that allows for the measurement of how many advertisements each individual has been exposed to. The consumer survey data used for this research is the Simmons National Consumer Survey (NCS). Repeated cross-section surveys between the years of 2000 to 2004 are pooled to obtain a sample of more than forty thousand respondents. The NCS includes individual consumer information on whether the respondents were diagnosed with high blood cholesterol, purchased statins,controlled diet and exercised regularly. In addition, it includes which magazines each respondent reads. By combining NCS with the advertisement archive, this allowed for the measurement of individual exposure to statins advertisements which can then be linked with individual level consumer behaviors. NCS also includes a rich set of information that allows for the control of a majority of factors that firms use in targeting their advertisements. As a result, this study takes into account that firms are likely to target specific groups that may be more inclined to use statins. As this targeting can be controlled, the causal impact of advertising on statins use can also be better assessed. Finally, as individual variation in exposure to advertising is also included in NCS, this study is able to examine how demographic groups are differentially exposed to advertising and how they react to it.
The results suggest that having more exposure to DTCA increases the probability of being diagnosed and being aware of having high blood cholesterol, and life style changes such as improving diet and exercising regularly. The results do not support that DTCA encourages those who are diagnosed with high blood cholesterol to purchase statins, which implies DTCA does not distort patient-physician relationship. Even after being diagnosed with high blood cholesterol, DTCA still affects them to exercise regularly. This suggests a spillover effect of prescription drug advertising rather than a moral hazard effect that individuals replace exercise with prescription drugs. Since this study focuses only on cholesterol reducing drug, the impact of DTCA can be specific to this therapeutic class of prescription drugs. It is possible that the impact of DTCA may be different depending on the class of drugs advertised. Spillover effect may appear in this case since treatment of high blood cholesterol is not totally dependent on prescription drugs.
Identifying causal impact of advertising using a repeated cross-sectional data is difficult since time order of advertising exposure and consumer behavior is not clear. Firms target their advertising to potential consumers. Because of this targeting, reverse causality may happen and bias the estimates upward. This study tries to reduce this potential bias by including a long list of variables to capture magazine-reading habits and the placement of advertisements.
In addition this study explores the sensitivity of results with a series of cross-checks and finds that the results are robust.
The spillover effect of DTCA that was found in this study suggests that DTCA has potential public health benefits as it encourages lifestyle changes and initiates treatment, but because of its public health implications, it needs to be closely monitored and regulated to include balanced risk and benefit information of the drug, and information about the disease and alternative treatments.

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