IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/randje/v47y2016i4p1029-1056.html

Push-me pull-you: comparative advertising in the OTC analgesics industry

Author

Listed:
  • Simon P. Anderson
  • Federico Ciliberto
  • Jura Liaukonyte
  • Régis Renault

Abstract

We model comparative advertising as brands pushing up own brand perception and pulling down the brand image of targeted rivals. We watched all TV advertisements for OTC analgesics 2001-2005 to construct matrices of rival targeting and estimate the structural model. These attack matrices identify diversion ratios and hence comparative advertising damage measures. We find that outgoing comparative advertising attacks are half as powerful as self-promotion in raising own perceived quality and cause more damage to the targeted rival than benefit to the advertiser. Comparative advertising causes most damage through the pull-down effect and has substantial benefits to other rivals.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Simon P. Anderson & Federico Ciliberto & Jura Liaukonyte & Régis Renault, 2016. "Push-me pull-you: comparative advertising in the OTC analgesics industry," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(4), pages 1029-1056, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:randje:v:47:y:2016:i:4:p:1029-1056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/rand.2016.47.issue-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Dubois, Pierre & Griffith, Rachel & O'Connell, Martin, 2014. "The Effects of Banning Advertising on Demand, Supply and Welfare: Structural Estimation on a Junk Food Market," TSE Working Papers 14-485, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    2. Amir, Rabah & Machowska, Dominika & Nowakowski, Andrzej, 2025. "The sleeper effect of comparative advertising in oligopolistic markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    3. Alexander E. Saak, 2012. "Dynamic Informative Advertising of New Experience Goods," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 104-135, March.
    4. Qiang Liu & Thomas J. Steenburgh & Sachin Gupta, 2015. "The Cross Attributes Flexible Substitution Logit: Uncovering Category Expansion and Share Impacts of Marketing Instruments," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(1), pages 144-159, January.
    5. Parisa Pourkarimi & Gamal Atallah, 2020. "The Impact of Cooperative R&D and Advertising on Innovation and Welfare," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(1), pages 143-167, March.
    6. Barton, Jared & Castillo, Marco & Petrie, Ragan, 2016. "Negative campaigning, fundraising, and voter turnout: A field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 99-113.
    7. Yenipazarli, Arda, 2024. "Strategic incentives for comparative advertising investments in non-zero-sum competition and economic consequences," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(3), pages 1059-1073.
    8. Ilya Morozov & Anna Tuchman, 2024. "Where Does Advertising Content Lead You? We Created a Bookstore to Find Out," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(5), pages 986-1001, September.
    9. Maria Alipranti & Emmanuel Petrakis, 2013. "Comparative Advertising in Markets with Network Externalities," Working Papers 1306, University of Crete, Department of Economics.
    10. Brett R. Gordon & Mitchell J. Lovett & Bowen Luo & James C. Reeder, 2023. "Disentangling the Effects of Ad Tone on Voter Turnout and Candidate Choice in Presidential Elections," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(1), pages 220-243, January.
    11. Murry, Charles, 2018. "The effect of retail competition on relationship-specific investments: evidence from new car advertising," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 253-281.
    12. Anderson, Simon & Ciliberto, Federico & Liaukonyte, Jura, 2010. "Getting into Your Head(Ache): The Information Content of Advertising in the Over-the-Counter Analgesics Industry," MPRA Paper 24916, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Anderson, Simon P. & Ciliberto, Federico & Liaukonyte, Jura, 2013. "Information content of advertising: Empirical evidence from the OTC analgesic industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 355-367.
    14. Dubois, Pierre & Majewska, Gosia, 2022. "Mergers and Advertising in the Pharmaceutical Industry," CEPR Discussion Papers 17658, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Bambauer-Sachse, Silke & Heinzle, Priska, 2018. "Comparative advertising for goods versus services: Effects of different types of product attributes through consumer reactance and activation on consumer response," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 82-90.
    16. Bart J. Bronnenberg & Jean-Pierre Dubé & Chad Syverson, 2022. "Marketing Investment and Intangible Brand Capital," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 53-74, Summer.
    17. Maria Alipranti & Evangelos Mitrokostas & Emmanuel Petrakis, 2013. "Comparative versus Informative Advertising in Oligopolistic Markets," Working Papers 1301, University of Crete, Department of Economics.
    18. Gorkem Bostanci & Pinar Yildirim & Kinshuk Jerath, 2023. "Negative Advertising and Competitive Positioning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2361-2382, April.
    19. Yi-Lin Tsai & Elisabeth Honka, 2021. "Informational and Noninformational Advertising Content," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 1030-1058, November.
    20. Matthew McGranaghan & Jura Liaukonyte & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2022. "How Viewer Tuning, Presence, and Attention Respond to Ad Content and Predict Brand Search Lift," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(5), pages 873-895, September.
    21. Pierre Dubois & Ariel Pakes, 2026. "Pharmaceutical Advertising in Dynamic Equilibrium," Working Papers hal-05573625, HAL.
    22. Cao, Sean Shun & Fang, Vivian W. & (Gillian) Lei, Lijun, 2021. "Negative peer disclosure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(3), pages 815-837.
    23. Alipranti, Maria & Mitrokostas, Evangelos & Petrakis, Emmanuel, 2016. "Non-comparative and comparative advertising in oligopolistic markets," DICE Discussion Papers 231, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    24. Kurt P. Munz & Minah H. Jung & Adam L. Alter, 2020. "Name Similarity Encourages Generosity: A Field Experiment in Email Personalization," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(6), pages 1071-1091, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    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:bla:randje:v:47:y:2016:i:4:p:1029-1056. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/randdus.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.