Attitudes toward direct-to-consumer healthcare service advertising and perceptions of information features: comparison of physicians and marketers

Purpose Research on direct-to-consumer health-care service advertising has not caught up with its noticeable and steady growth. In particular, there is very limited research exploring the perspectives of physicians and health-care marketers vis-à-vis consumers. To address the gap, this study aims to investigate the US physicians’ and the US health-care marketers’ attitudes toward health-care service advertising and their perceptions of information features in the advertisements. Design/methodology/approach Cross-sectional surveys were conducted online in Nevada, generating a data set comprising 247 responses, 109 from physicians and 138 from health-care marketers. Independent samples t-tests were used to compare physicians and marketers in their perceptions of advertising features. Multiple linear regression was conducted to examine potential predictors of physician attitudes. Findings Physicians exhibited negative attitudes toward advertising, whereas marketers showed positive attitudes. Physicians also showed a wider variation than marketers in their appreciation across 27 different advertisement information features, suggesting their discernment among the features that marketers did not share. Specifically, physicians rated access-related features the highest and service quality-related features the lowest, whereas marketers rated provider qualification the highest and all other features equivalently. Physicians’ involvement in their organizations’ advertising process was low. Younger physicians exhibited more positive attitudes. Originality/value Stakeholder theory recommends collaboration between physicians and marketers as partners in the advertising process, and the partnership will benefit the medical profession, health-care organizations and consumers.