Marketing Study Investigates Impact of Viagra TV Ads on Birth Rates

Many marketing studies have examined the impact of direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals on sales and market shares. But in a new study, a researcher from The University of Texas at Dallas wanted to know whether drug advertising might have some unintended, population-level health consequences.

“A colleague and I were brainstorming, and I wondered, ‘Can Viagra ads result in more babies?’” said Dr. Tongil “TI” Kim, assistant professor of marketing in the Naveen Jindal School of Management and one of the study’s co-authors. “With a more or less fixed gestation period, my colleague and I knew that we could compare advertising amount and birth rates after 10 months.”

In the study, published online April 28 and in the August print issue of the Journal of Marketing Research, Kim and Dr. Diwas KC of Emory University explored the impact of direct-to-consumer advertising of erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs on birth rate at the population level.