Advertising and Health in Romania
Advertising and Health in Romania

Summary/Abstract: “Direct-to-consumer advertising” (DTC advertising) was first identifyed in relation to pharmaceuticals, and now it is used for a variety of other products. In the ‘80s the American pharmaceutical industry had proposed to change the marketing approach in order to include consumers (until then the dominant marketing strategy in pharmaceutical industry was geared only to physicians) and this change in approach had lead to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and FDA regulations of advertising in this sector (Mintzes et al., 2002). As many studies had proven (Gilbody, Wilson & Watt, 2005) DTC advertising can cultivate false faiths among public related to the existence of medication for any disease, leading to medicalisation of all aspects of people’s lives (Bonaccorso and Sturchio, 2002). This paper aims to test the impact of exposure to advertising for pharmaceutical products on Romanian consumers and to identify the way in which DTC is functioning in Romania. The methodology of the paper is based on triangulation of two main methods of research: thematic analysis of advertisings at two pharmaceutical products, on the one hand, and semi-directive interviews with twenty patients who had followed those advertisings. The results showed the existence of DTC’s impact on Romanian public. The respondents had declared that they could listen to the PG’s recommendations related to pharmaceutical products in “normal” circumstances but in a crisis case (accident, sudden illness) they would go to the pharmacy and ask for the pharmaceutical products they saw in the media. Only in the case of a lack of improvement for their situation they had declared that they would turn to the doctors and medical specialists.

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