Survey: DTC not effective in majority of consumers

Each year, the Thomson Reuters Pulse Healthcare Survey collects information about health behavior, attitudes, and utilization from more than 100,000 U.S. households.  Nearly 8% of those seeing, hearing, or receiving ads were influenced to ask their doctor about a specific medication. This percentage decreases as respondents’ age and income rise.

The results depicted below represent responses from 3,013 survey participants interviewed from June 1-13, 2010. The survey questions, which address the use of pharmaceutical advertising, were developed in conjunction with National Public Radio. The margin of error is 1.8 percent.

• Nearly 8% of those seeing, hearing, or receiving ads were influenced to ask their doctor about a specific medication. This percentage decreases as respondents’ age and income rise.

• Slightly more than one-third of those that asked their doctor about a specific medication received a prescription for that medication. This number increases with age.

• The main source of information about prescription medications is far and away the physician (58%) followed by the internet (11%) and pharmacist (8%).

• Nearly 60% of respondents believe advertising for dietary/nutritional supplements are untrustworthy. Skepticism increases among people with higher income and education.

Now if we take this data on face date you would believe that DTC advertising is not very effective, however there are some questions that are missing.  For example, we might want to ask people “did DTC advertising make you aware of any health conditions that you were not aware of before ?”.   “Once you became aware of these health conditions what action did you take ?”

Manhattan Research has, time and time again, shown that the number of people going online for health information is climbing steadily.   Do we believe that people are going online because of DTC ads or is it for another reason ?

In my many years of research I have found that people go online for health information because of certain triggers including:

• Health problem that is bothering them or a family member they care for/about.
• Research health treatments for diagnosed health problem.
• Understand health care treatments and evaluate options.

In all of consumer packaged goods marketing what we are witnessing is a clear disconnect between awareness and conversion (purchase/intent to purchase/intent to ask physician for an Rx).  This is because of a lot of reasons including the mistrust of traditional advertising and the ability to check marketers claims against multiple sourced of information via the Internet including social media.

What does this mean for marketers ?

DTC advertising should be used to drive awareness of new products and health conditions.  Quantitative measurements should be used to measure the awareness level within the target audience(s) and once that awareness level is reached marketers have to move from an awareness model to an engagement model to get consumers to ask for an Rx.    Drug marketers also need to start building capabilities NOW to partner with health care professional and help them market their practice and health recommendations to patients.  This does not mean providing physicians with “sales brochure content” for their websites it means providing them will credible, valuable health information that can effect patient outcomes and lead to lower health costs.

I love research and leading research but you have to know what questions to ask to provide the whole picture of consumers insights.

You can download the results from this survey here