In August, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) sought to curb growing public criticism over its consumer advertising practices by releasing voluntary advertising guidelines. The document stated that drug advertising should serve the public health by “ increasing awareness about diseases ” and “ educating patients about treatment options. ” The voluntary PhRMA gui...

Advances in information technologies enable firms to collect detailed consumer data and target individual consumers with tailored ads. Consumer data are among the most valuable assets that firms own. An interesting phenomenon is that competing firms often trade their consumer data with each other. Based on a common-value all-pay auction framework, this paper studies the advertising competition ...

In this study, we introduce a new approach to measuring the impact of TV advertising on the demand for consumer goods. We combine three data sources (i.e., store-level scanner data, advertising spending data and advertising tracking data) to assess the impact of advertising on demand. We estimate demand by employing a random coefficient logit model that uses aggregate data, in accordance with B...

Advertisers use online customer data to target their marketing appeals. This has heightened consumers’ privacy concerns, leading governments to pass laws designed to protect consumer privacy by restricting the use of data and by restricting online tracking techniques used by websites. We use the responses of 3.3 million survey-takers who had been randomly exposed to 9,596 online display (banner...

The aim of this research is to help advance a better understanding of digital advertising innovation adoption, consumer acceptance of customized advertising, and the influence of customized advertising on product purchase intent via a mobile social network. To this end, two types of questionnaires, including an open questionnaire filled up by 16 experts and university professors was designed to...

The two leading online consumer-to-consumer platforms use very different revenue models: eBay.com in the United States uses a brokerage model in which sellers pay eBay on a transaction basis, whereas Taobao.com in China uses an advertising model in which sellers can use the basic platform service for free and pay Taobao for advertising services to increase their exposure. This paper studies how...

Until recently, brand identities were built by the firms via brand-image advertising. However, the flourishing of consumer communication weakened the grip of firms on their brands. The interaction between advertising and consumer communications and their joint impact on brand identity is the focal point of this paper. We present a model in which consumer preference for functional attributes may...

References 1 Auton F. The advertising of pharmaceuticals direct to consumers: a critical review of the literature and debate. Int J Adver 2004; 23: 1–5. 2 Hone F, Benson R. DTC: European style. Pharm Exec 2004; 24: 96–102. 3 Kravitz RL, Epstein RM, Feldman MD, et al. Infl uence of patients’ requests for direct-to-consumer advertised antidepressants: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA 2005; 293...

We model a duopoly in which media compete in both the consumer and the advertising markets. The advertisers’ payoffs depend on the coverage in the consumer market, hence there are cross-market externalities but no direct transfers are possible. At a (sunk) cost, platforms select the quality they offer consumers, and the prices they charge consumers and advertisers. Under well-defined conditions...

This paper empirically investigates how the intensity of direct-to-consumer advertising depends on the sales channel, using data from the US mutual fund industry. The empirical analysis exploits the presence of two sales channels within the industry, one where firms sell directly to end consumers and another where firms sell through expert intermediaries. I find that firms in the direct sales c...