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The case was written to help students understand the value that a product or service can offer a consumer in terms of helping them accomplish important tasks and overcome obstacles. It is intended to help students understand the link between marketing strategy and different business models.

The case was written after two of the co-authors assisted the organization with developing a marketing strategy and communications plan. The details in the case were gathered through personal interviews with staff as well as document analysis, including marketing documents, financial statements and strategic plans.

This case is suitable at the undergraduate level in third and fourth year marketing courses or strategy courses where all students have completed, at minimum, an introductory level marketing course. It can also be used in graduate-level business administration courses that focus on marketing strategy and positioning.

This paper aims to explore whether and how consumers perceive the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on their own doctor’s prescribing behaviors, and subsequent responses toward their doctor’s advice.

Three experimental studies were conducted. Studies 1 and 2 are based on text-based manipulations and undergraduate student research participants. Study 3 uses image-based manipulations and average adult consumers.

Study 1 demonstrates that consumers can be quite skeptical about their doctor’s motives for prescribing certain brand-name drugs; in particular, consumers can construe doctors as agents of persuasion for prescribed brands. Study 2 shows that this can result not only in choosing generic drugs over prescribed brands but also in opting out of pharmaceuticals altogether by choosing alternatives like natural remedies. Study 3 further demonstrates that these effects can be easily triggered by visual cues in a non-student sample.

This research builds on the existing literature on pharmaceutical marketing communications, and extends the theory of persuasion knowledge into healthcare settings.

This chapter examines representations of gender in online modafinil markets. While gender has often been absent from scholarship on online drug markets, our analysis demonstrates the ubiquity of gender in representations of modafinil users and sellers. The analysis draws on visual images, blogs, and marketing emails relating to three websites selling modafinil, discussed pseudonymously. We describe the range of ways that notions of gender are represented in advertising. Although women represent around 40% of that buying modafinil online, websites and communications tended not to feature women. Although sexist stereotypes of women were rarely present (in contrast to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising), the ways that modafinil was imagined tended to focus narrowly on corporate spheres of work and productivity. We contrast this narrow imaginary with female journalists’ own accounts of using modafinil to manage illness and enhance creativity. Thus, we conclude that the ways that modafinil has been imagined reflects working assumptions as to who is considered the ‘normal’ participant in online modafinil markets.