Drug Promotion in the Media

medicine Promotion in the MediaTHE GHANAIAN MEDIA AND CONSUMER PROTECTION THE human face OF THE (TRADITIONAL) MEDICINE INDUSTRYThe issue of consumer protection has been widely discussed in many a(prenominal) countries across the world and especi everyy in the advanced countries. In novel times, this discussion has diff drilld into developing countries, especially in Africa and most ramifyicularly in Ghana. Also, the medias integrity and ethics of ledgerism has been extensively debated. The g everyplacenment issue matter of using the media to promote drugs and drug related yields to consumers directly has undergone very much scrutiny lately. The literature on these issues is profuse, yet some nonable ones forget be reviewed in the subsequent paragraphs.To begin with, Julie Donohue in her article, A muniment of Drug Advertising The Evolving Roles of Consumers and Consumer Protection (2006) queried the importance of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) on drugs. Although s he concur on the fact that the main tool of consumer protection laws is the disclosure of development in order to level the playing field between buyers and sellers (p662), to her, this phenomenon actually encourages self-diagnosis and is therefore detrimental to consumers health. She blamed this problem on the level-headed and ethnical changes in health care. In her own words, she argued that the legal and cultural changes in health care brought about by the patients and consumers rights movements laid the grounding for the DTCA of prescription medicine drugs. DTCA was surely an unint nullifyed consequence of these friendly movements and may, paradoxically, serve to devil future efforts to protect patients and consumers (p691).She further argued that the use of mass media advertising for prescription drugs misleads consumers into taking costly prescription drugs that they do non need. She opined that mass media ads were further intended to be a vehicle for pharmaceutic manufacturers to tell end users about their productsand non to help businesses grocery store their products (p662). According to her, drugs that announce to consumers had the return of established brand recognition, and this is what has accounted for most pharmaceutical companies pushing their products to the mass media to be denote.Also, in the book The Truth About the Drug Companies (2004), Angell Marcia, apprised us good on underpinnings of drug companies. Tracing their eruption from 1980, Angell, lamented the manner in which the pharmaceutical industry has not been innovative. To him, exactly a handful of truly classical drugs present been brought to market place in recent years, and they were by and large based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies or the internal Institutes of Health. The majority of new drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called me-too drugs. (p3 ).He explained that the thinking behind these me-too drugs is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market and make profit. Thus, to him, drug companies spring up almost every day, not because they intend to bring any new product onto the market, but only to reproduce drugs which are already in existence, and with the habituser of making profit. This motive informs their resort to the mass media for direct-to-consumer advertisements (DTCA) so as to gain advantage over their competitors. He thus advocates that the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) must stiffen their praise of new drugs coming unto the market. Thus, to him, the me-too market would collapse virtually overnight if the FDA do approval of new drugs contingent on their being better in some important way than older drugs already on the market (p12). He is of the view that this measure would make drug companies focus on finding truly innovative drugs and also reduce the incessant and staggeringly expensive marketing necessary to jockey for position in the me-too market.Furthermore, in their article Media Credibility and Informativeness of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising(2004), Huh et al evaluated consumer perceptions of the media credibleness and informativeness of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisement and examined how those perceptions were influenced by consumer predispositions and demographic characteristics. To them, DTC advertisements are targeted mostly at older consumersa segment that is particularly susceptible and undefended to commercial persuasion (p29). This is because, to them studies have documented various physical, psychological and social changes that accompany aging, including reduced sensory abilitiescognitive impairmentsthat usher out alter the communication operation and result in decision-making difficulties and decreased resistance to persuasion (p34). This trend, they argue is what has necessitated the atmospheric pressure on media cred ibility because audience tend to rely on media they drive credible and informative (p29) in choosing which drug to buy or not to buy.They argued that, in recent times, the basic objective of DTC advertisements are to inform, persuade and cue consumers to take prescribed actions toward advertised drugs-to learn, to prefer, to ask for, and to ask for again (p30). This, to them, is a significant departure from the original form of advertising, which concentrated on influencing and maintaining remove for prescription drugs through the use of the push promotion strategy and which took the form of trade advertising directed at physicians and was used to deliver culture that would work with separate promotional tools to educate, persuade and help sell advertised drugs to physicians (p29). noneable among their findings was the fact that consumers place greater value on the instruction utility of the media of DTC drug advertising than its credibility as an instruction reservoir abou t prescription drugs (p53).Moreover, Burke et al in their article fabrication by Implication An Experimental Investigation (1988) set out to, among other things, measure the deceptive of two common types of advertising claims and their relative metier for increasing consumer brand preference and buy identicallihood (p484). These types of advertising claims include, those that cogency lead the consumer to have a false impression of a product not by literal interpretation, but by implication (ibid). To them, there is a need for consumer protection for products such as pain relievers, where brands plead similar or identical performance and consumers lack a stiff reality test of the truthfulness of ad claims (p492). This is because, they found out that grow and qualified claims can enhance consumers images of advertised brand and related purchase intentions (ibid). They then proffered that in view of the potential of these advertisements to mislead consumers in cases where the advertised brand has no real competitive differentiation, advertisers are advised to use such claims judiciously (ibid).To add to, in his article Self edict and Television Advertising A Replication and Extension (2001), Abernethy Avery opined that although television displace have the right to reject almost any advertisement submitted for broadcast, example that power to protect consumers from potentially false or misleading claims can directly lower station revenues (p1). Thus to him, because of the possibility of television send, like other media platforms, of losing revenue or not making much profit, these media outlets get any advertisement from advertisers and air them on their platforms, without recourse to whether or not the advertisement can harm or mislead the consumer. Though he agrees that there are state and federal laws regulating the advertising of trustworthy products such as tobacco, and also specific punitive measures for false and misleading or defamatory adv ertisements, he is of the view that much responsibility rests on media houses to engage in self-regulation (p2) or clearance process (p3) to sieve advertisements sooner putting them out for the publics consumption.In his own words, owners and managers of media vehicles have great power to check the type of advertising they carryand determine if it is acceptable for their audience (p2). He believes this process has the potential to provide broad consumer protection from false, misleading, or, inappropriate advertising (p3). He found out through his research that only 3% of stations substantiate the claims of every submitted advertisement and 2.5% of stations reject 10% or more of advertisements submitted for broadcast (p9). These results to him, debate that the consumer protection provided by television advertisingis uneven (ibid). As part of measures to stamp down this anomaly, he posits that the Federal Communications Commission must require stations to submit their advertisin g review policies during license renewal and that those policies be part of public record (p10). He believed that this measure would improve consumer protection since media houses and advertisers pull up stakes be under obligation to put out true information about products.REFERENCESDonohue, J., (2006) A History of Drug Advertising The Evolving Roles of Consumers and Consumer Protection in Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 84, Issue 4, pp 659-699Marcia, A., (2004) The Truth about the Drug Companies.Huh et al., (2004) Media Credibility and Informativeness of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising in Health Marketing Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp 27-61Burke et al., (1988) conjuring by Implication An Experimental Investigation in Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp 483-494Abernethy et al., (2001) Self-regulation and Television Advertising A Replication and Extension in Journal of Adertising Research, Vol. 41, Issue 3, pp 31-37