They're inescapable—ads pushing medical treatments bombard us from magazines, TV, and the Internet. But do they work?

That's the question that consumer behavior experts Anthony Cox and Dena Cox, of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis, and Gregory Zimet, professor of pediatrics and clinical psychology at the IU School of Medicine, are exploring in research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Recently, the co-investigators have suggested that many messages about drug products may unintentionally dis suade consumers from taking the medicine. As Anthony Cox, professor of marketing, said in a recent Washington Post story, “People who design campaigns may—with the best intentions—actually end up designing programs that are ineffective or even harmful.”

It depends on how the product's risks are framed. In a study that appears as “Understanding Consumer Responses to Product Risk Information” in the January 2006 issue of Journal of Marketing, the researchers examine how consumers evaluate information on medical product risks (such as risk disclosures in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads). They tested 213 clients of public clinics who were at risk of contracting hepatitis B, a viral disease transmitted primarily through sexual contact or shared needle use. Hepatitis B is largely preventable with a series of vaccinations.

Some participants read print messages emphasizing the benefits of receiving hepatitis B vaccinations while others read a message stressing the costs of not getting the shots. The group who read a “loss-framed” message—one that stressed the loss of protection if they did not get the shots—exhibited aversion to the vaccination, focusing both on short-term adverse effects (such as pain from the injection) as well as more permanent harm.

But those exposed to a “gain-framed” message highlighting the benefits of vaccination differentiated among the types of product risk and were more inclined to be vaccinated. “They essentially ignored temporary product risks but gave considerable weight to risks of permanent harm,” the co-authors write.

The collaborative study has important implications for those who design and regulate promotional messages that contain product risk disclosures, say the researchers. As Dena Cox notes, “the findings could help prevent the spread of an extremely destructive disease.”