Impact of Side-Effects Information in Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising on Consumers' Product Attitudes

This study investigated whether personality differences (i.e., personal need for structure [PNS] and personal fear of invalidity [PFI]) would interact with the type of risk information in Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs to influence participants' attitudes toward the ad and brand via differences in processing of the content of the ads. Results for both high PNS and low-PNS participants suggested that their attitudes toward the brand were influenced by their global attitudes toward DTCA, while their attitudes toward the ad were not affected by their global attitudes. For participants with higher personal fear of invalidity, their attitudes toward the brand were also correlated with their global attitudes toward DTCA. For low-PNS participants, attitudes toward the brand were influenced by the type of risk information. The analyses also indicated that for participants who seemed to engage in the central route (careful) processing (i.e., low PNS), attitudes toward the drug were more favorable among participants presented with mild (vs. severe) risk information.