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Some Drug Advertising Campaigns Boost Sales Of Another Company's Drug - A Bitter Pill To Swallow
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
Even Big Pharma sometimes wastes its advertising dollars on a campaign that fails to increase sales of a particular drug. Even worse, sometimes a campaign results in increased sales for a rival company's drug of the same class. That is when the drug manufacturer takes two aspirin and goes to bed.
Unexpected Effect Of Direct-to-consumer Drug Ads
Television ads for prescription drugs are everywhere, enticing people to ask their doctors for this drug or that one, but the effect this type of ad has on American healthcare may be more complicated than simply inducing patients to choose one brand or the other, according to a team of researchers.The researchers found that the direct-to-consumer advertising of Vioxx and Celebrex had positive effects on patient flow, increasing the numbers of patients seeking treatment for osteoarthritis.
The researchers report that "the effect of Vioxx direct-to-consumer advertising was consistently positive, increasing the proportion of osteoarthritis patient visits for which a prescription was written for Vioxx."
The Celebrex advertising was, however, associated with higher rates of Vioxx prescribing, but was not associated with significant changes in prescribing for Celebrex. Possibly, strong efforts by Pfizer drug representatives marketing Celebrex to physicians had already grown the Celebrex prescription base. Another possibility is that the heavy advertising by Pfizer for Vioxx embedded that brand in people's minds early on and Celebrex ads simply reinforced the class of drugs rather than a specific brand.
The researchers did find that direct-to-consumer ads for Vioxx and Celebrex influenced doctors' prescribing and patient behaviors.
"These ads convinced more people to visit their doctor's for treatment of osteoarthritis," says Kleit of Penn State. "Interestingly, the Celebrex ads were not very good at getting people to ask for or prescribe Celebrex, but did influence visits to the doctor and Vioxx prescriptions, exhibiting a class effect."
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