Category- versus Brand-Level Advertising Messages in a Highly Regulated Environment
作者研究了一个高度监管的市场中，品类广告和品牌广告的动态效果差异。以新药为例，法规要求这两类广告内容互斥：品类广告只能传递疾病信息，不能推广品牌；品牌广告则不能包含治疗信息。作者用带连续状态和离散观测的增广卡尔曼滤波（一种统计方法）分析了广告对新处方和续方的影响。结果发现，两类广告都有复杂动态效果，总体上品牌广告更有效，尤其在竞争对手进入后。大量验证测试支持了模型优势。作者还讨论了管理者和监管者的启示。
The authors examine the dynamic effects of category- and brand-level advertising for a new pharmaceutical in a market in which regulations require that the content of these two types of advertising be mutually exclusive. Specifically, category, or generic, messages should communicate information only about the disease without promoting any brand, whereas brand-level messages should be void of any therapeutic information. This brings up two questions of great managerial importance: Which type of message is generally more effective (category or brand level), and when is one type more effective than the other? The authors pursue these questions by analyzing the effects of advertising on new and refill prescriptions through the use of an augmented Kalman filter with continuous state and discrete observations. The findings suggest the presence of complex dynamics for both types of regulation-induced advertising messages. In general, brand advertising is more effective, especially after competitive entry. Extensive validation tests confirm the superiority of the modeling approach. The authors discuss implications for managers and regulators.