IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/23662.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumer Learning and the Entry of Generic Pharmaceuticals

Author

Listed:
  • Neha Bairoliya
  • Pinar Karaca-Mandic
  • Jeffrey S. McCullough
  • Amil Petrin

Abstract

Generic pharmaceuticals provide low-cost access to treatment. Despite their chemical equivalence to branded products, many mechanisms may hinder generic substitution. Consumers may be unaware of their equivalence. Firms may influence consumers through advertising or product line extensions. We estimate a structural model of pharmaceutical demand where consumers learn about stochastic match qualities with specific drugs. Naïve models, without consumer heterogeneity and learning, grossly underestimate demand elasticities. Consumer bias against generics critically depends on experience. Advertising and line extensions yield modest increases in branded market shares. These effects are dominated by consumers’ initial perception bias against generics.

Suggested Citation

  • Neha Bairoliya & Pinar Karaca-Mandic & Jeffrey S. McCullough & Amil Petrin, 2017. "Consumer Learning and the Entry of Generic Pharmaceuticals," NBER Working Papers 23662, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23662
    Note: EH IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23662.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Berndt & Murray Aitken, 2011. "Brand Loyalty, Generic Entry and Price Competition in Pharmaceuticals in the Quarter Century after the 1984 Waxman-Hatch Legislation," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 177-201.
    2. Small, Kenneth A & Rosen, Harvey S, 1981. "Applied Welfare Economics with Discrete Choice Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(1), pages 105-130, January.
    3. Scott Morton, Fiona M., 2000. "Barriers to entry, brand advertising, and generic entry in the US pharmaceutical industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(7), pages 1085-1104, October.
    4. Bradley T. Shapiro, 2016. "Estimating the cost of strategic entry delay in pharmaceuticals: The case of Ambien CR," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 201-231, September.
    5. Leemore Dafny & Christopher Ody & Matt Schmitt, 2017. "When Discounts Raise Costs: The Effect of Copay Coupons on Generic Utilization," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 91-123, May.
    6. Michael Sinkinson & Amanda Starc, 2015. "Ask Your Doctor? Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals," NBER Working Papers 21045, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Train,Kenneth E., 2009. "Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521766555.
    8. Gregory S. Crawford & Matthew Shum, 2005. "Uncertainty and Learning in Pharmaceutical Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(4), pages 1137-1173, July.
    9. John Rizzo & Richard Zeckhauser, 2009. "Generic script share and the price of brand-name drugs: the role of consumer choice," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 291-316, September.
    10. Mark V. Pauly & Thomas G. Mcguire & Pedro P. Barros (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Health Economics," Handbook of Health Economics, Elsevier, volume 2, number 2.
    11. Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2011. "Strategic Entry Deterrence and the Behavior of Pharmaceutical Incumbents Prior to Patent Expiration," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 1-36, February.
    12. Ching, Andrew T., 2010. "Consumer learning and heterogeneity: Dynamics of demand for prescription drugs after patent expiration," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 619-638, November.
    13. Tülin Erdem & Michael P. Keane, 1996. "Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Capturing Dynamic Brand Choice Processes in Turbulent Consumer Goods Markets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(1), pages 1-20.
    14. W. David Bradford & Andrew N. Kleit, 2006. "Direct to Consumer Advertising," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, chapter 29, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Mark Duggan & Fiona Scott Morton, 2010. "The Effect of Medicare Part D on Pharmaceutical Prices and Utilization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 590-607, March.
    16. Steven T. Berry, 1994. "Estimating Discrete-Choice Models of Product Differentiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(2), pages 242-262, Summer.
    17. Amil Petrin, 2001. "Quantifying the Benefits of New Products: The Case of the Minivan," NBER Working Papers 8227, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Daniel A. Ackerberg, 2003. "Advertising, learning, and consumer choice in experience good markets: an empirical examination," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(3), pages 1007-1040, August.
    19. Sangwoo Shin & Sanjog Misra & Dan Horsky, 2012. "Disentangling Preferences and Learning in Brand Choice Models," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 115-137, January.
    20. Hemphill, C. Scott & Sampat, Bhaven N., 2012. "Evergreening, patent challenges, and effective market life in pharmaceuticals," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 327-339.
    21. Mark Duggan & Patrick Healy & Fiona Scott Morton, 2008. "Providing Prescription Drug Coverage to the Elderly: America's Experiment with Medicare Part D," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 69-92, Fall.
    22. Toshiaki Iizuka & Ginger Zhe Jin, 2005. "The Effect of Prescription Drug Advertising on Doctor Visits," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 701-727, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Atal, Juan Pablo & Cuesta, José Ignacio & Sæthre, Morten, 2018. "Quality Regulation and Competition: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Markets," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 20/2018, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arcidiacono, Peter & Ellickson, Paul B. & Landry, Peter & Ridley, David B., 2013. "Pharmaceutical followers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 538-553.
    2. Jie Bai, 2016. "Melons as Lemons: Asymmetric Information, Consumer Learning and Seller Reputation," Natural Field Experiments 00540, The Field Experiments Website.
    3. Pradeep Chintagunta & Renna Jiang & Ginger Jin, 2009. "Information, learning, and drug diffusion: The case of Cox-2 inhibitors," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 399-443, December.
    4. Andrew T. Ching & Tülin Erdem & Michael P. Keane, 2013. "Learning Models: An Assessment of Progress, Challenges and New Developments," Economics Papers 2013-W07, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    5. Pradeep Chintagunta & Tülin Erdem & Peter E. Rossi & Michel Wedel, 2006. "Structural Modeling in Marketing: Review and Assessment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(6), pages 604-616, 11-12.
    6. Lee, Chung-Ying, 2020. "Pricing strategy and moral hazard: Copay coupons in pharmaceuticals," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    7. Shervin Shahrokhi Tehrani & Andrew T. Ching, 2024. "A Heuristic Approach to Explore: The Value of Perfect Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(5), pages 3200-3224, May.
    8. Michael P. Keane, 2013. "Panel data discrete choice models of consumer demand," Economics Papers 2013-W08, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    9. Ching, Andrew T., 2010. "Consumer learning and heterogeneity: Dynamics of demand for prescription drugs after patent expiration," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 619-638, November.
    10. Szymanowski, Maciej & Gijsbrechts, Els, 2013. "Patterns in consumption-based learning about brand quality for consumer packaged goods," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 219-235.
    11. Dhaval M. Dave, 2013. "Effects of Pharmaceutical Promotion: A Review and Assessment," NBER Working Papers 18830, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Andrew Ching & Susumu Imai & Masakazu Ishihara & Neelam Jain, 2012. "A practitioner’s guide to Bayesian estimation of discrete choice dynamic programming models," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 151-196, June.
    13. Ching, Andrew T. & Erdem, Tülin & Keane, Michael P., 2014. "A simple method to estimate the roles of learning, inventories and category consideration in consumer choice," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 60-72.
    14. Chatterjee, Chirantan & Kubo, Kensuke & Pingali, Viswanath, 2015. "The consumer welfare implications of governmental policies and firm strategy in markets for medicines," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 255-273.
    15. Daniel Ackerberg, 2009. "A new use of importance sampling to reduce computational burden in simulation estimation," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 343-376, December.
    16. Tülin Erdem & Michael P. Keane & Baohong Sun, 2008. "A Dynamic Model of Brand Choice When Price and Advertising Signal Product Quality," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(6), pages 1111-1125, 11-12.
    17. Limin Fang, 2022. "The Effects of Online Review Platforms on Restaurant Revenue, Consumer Learning, and Welfare," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 8116-8143, November.
    18. Andrew T. Ching & Tülin Erdem & Michael P. Keane, 2013. "Invited Paper ---Learning Models: An Assessment of Progress, Challenges, and New Developments," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(6), pages 913-938, November.
    19. Hai Che & Tülin Erdem & T. Sabri Öncü, 2015. "Consumer learning and evolution of consumer brand preferences," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 173-202, September.
    20. Jean-Pierre Dubé & Xueming Luo & Zheng Fang, 2017. "Self-Signaling and Prosocial Behavior: A Cause Marketing Experiment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 140-156, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23662. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.