Impact of Television Advertising on the Impulse to Purchase Over-the-Counter Medicine

The pharmaceutical industry is a dynamic ever-growing market. It is a market that will never cease to exist. Given the current economic, political and demographic situation in Romania, the demand for medication will be increasingly higher for all age categories. The motivation is as simple as it is complex: time and time management for the 21st century man becomes a concept that is more and more difficult to control. Health care in this light century keeps going down due to long hours spent at work, highly processed foods and lack of or continual postponement of physical exercise. All these trigger a body weakness and implicitly a deterioration of one’s health. Therefore, people are more prone to embrace more rapid and miraculous methods towards physical restoration. People tend to believe that their health issues are more numerous while television advertisements promise to solve all these issues for them. We consider that it is firstly necessary to educate consumers in this respect as they are the only ones able to decide on what is best for them; on the other hand, drugs advertising may only influence a potential consumer to the extent to which they allow this to happen. Throughout this study, we will mathematically show how advertising influences the impulse to purchase over-the-counter drugs.