Tests found that people who paid more for branded drugs felt better than those who paid less for identical generics, writes DR DYLAN EVANS.
GIVEN THE choice between a well-known brand of headache pill and a cheaper generic alternative, which would you buy? If you are like most people, you’d choose the more expensive branded version.
However, it is often the case that the branded pills and the generic versions contain exactly the same drug – whether it be aspirin, paracetamol or ibuprofen.
Are we being duped by marketing into wasting our money, or are we better off buying the branded version? Surprisingly, it turns out that the branded pills can be more effective, even though they contain exactly the same ingredients as the generic alternatives.
Last year, I ran an experiment to test this idea for a BBC television programme. Together with Lesley Regan, a clinical professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, I recruited some volunteers who suffered from persistent headaches.
Regan and I asked the volunteers to take their favourite headache pills on some occasions and to take a new pill with an unknown brand name on other occasions.
Unknown to the volunteers, the “new pills” were exactly the same as their favourite branded versions. We had simply scratched off the brand names and put them in a different box.
When the volunteers reported back to us, they found that the branded versions were more effective. This was a small informal experiment, done for TV. However, similar results were obtained in a much more rigorous study that was published in the Journal of Marketing Research in November 2005.
In that study, Dan Ariely of MIT asked participants to consume “SoBe Adrenaline Rush” (a drink that claims to help increase mental acuity on its package) and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve. Some participants were charged 89 cents for the drink, while others were charged $1.89.
Those who consumed the more expensive version showed a greater increase in their puzzle-solving ability, even though both drinks were exactly the same. So it appears that consumers who pay a discounted price for certain products may derive less actual benefit from consuming these products than those who buy and consume the exact same product but pay its regular price.
Ariely followed up with another experiment which he reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year. He recruited 82 healthy volunteers using an online advert and informed each participant by brochure about a purported new opioid analgesic approved by the Food and Drug Administration; it was described as similar to codeine with faster onset time, but it was actually a placebo pill.
After randomisation, half of the participants were informed that the drug had a regular price of $2.50 per pill and half that the price had been discounted to $0.10 per pill (no reason for the discount was mentioned). All participants received identical placebo pills and were paid $30. Participants were blinded to the study purpose, and researchers were blinded to group assignment.
After taking their pills, participants were given electric shocks to the wrist and asked to rate the pain on a scale from “no pain at all” to “the worst pain imaginable”.
The result? Pain reduction was greater for the regular-price pill than for the discounted version, even though both were placebos.
Experiments like this show that marketing actions, such as pricing, can alter the actual efficacy of products to which they are applied. These placebo effects stem from activation of expectancies about the efficacy of the product, a process that appears not to be conscious.
Perhaps the well-known cliché that “one gets what one pays for” has even more merit than is usually believed.
Dr Dylan Evans is a lecturer in behavioural science in the School of Medicine at UCC