Effectiveness of Health Communication and Consumer Behavior Responses (Answers)

1.​True or False? Online reviews of clinicians have been found to have little effect in terms of an individual’s choice of a physician. ANSWER: False 2.​True or False? The large majority of boomers are concerned with the accuracy of information on social media sites. ANSWER: False 3.​True or False? Fear appeals in advertising have not been found to be very effective because consumers turn away from them because of their anxiety-producing effects. ANSWER: False 4.​True or False? Moderate fear appeals have been found to be effective in inducing positive behavior change in low-involvement situations. ANSWER: True 5.​True or False? The major challenge with using humor as an emotional approach in messaging is that this emotion is often specific to the individual. ANSWER: True 6.​True or False? When considering the channel in the communication process, the major delineation is whether it is personal or done over the Internet. ANSWER: False 7.​True or False? A problem with using the interpersonal channel of communication is the lack of total control. ANSWER: True 8.​True or False? Health care has historically relied on opinion leaders in a word-of-mouth channel of communication. ANSWER: True 9.​True or False? For communication to occur, a message must be decoded by the receiver the same way it was encoded by the sender. ANSWER: True 10.​ True or False? Noise in the channel of communication can be created by the sender or by the channel itself. ANSWER: True 11.​ True or False? The physician’s gender has been found to have no effect on the patient–physician interaction. ANSWER: False 12.​ True or False? Patients of female physicians have been found to talk more. ANSWER: True 13.​ True or False? A hospital in a particular community has been very proactive about controlling their healthcare costs. Over the past month, the local newspaper has run a series of stories highlighting the rising cost of health care. When the hospital did a community survey on their image a month later, they were rated poorly on cost-effectiveness. In this example, channel noise was the problem, not the hospital’s poor encoding process. ANSWER: True 14.​ True or False? The major advantage of the interpersonal channel is the immediacy of feedback. ANSWER: True 15.​ True or False? Advertising is any indirectly paid form of promotion of goods or services. ANSWER: False 16.​ True or False? A hospital offers a coupon in the newspaper for a free heart-healthy assessment for individuals over age 60 for 2 weeks after opening the new heart center. This is an example of a sales promotion strategy. ANSWER: True 17.​ True or False? The right message delivered to the correct audience is the major goal of any successful promotional strategy. ANSWER: False 18.​ True or False? Owned media are all media owned by third-party, for-profit organizations. ANSWER: False 19.​ True or False? When patients post a story about the great care they received at a medical group on their own Facebook page, this might be considered earned media. ANSWER: True 20.​ True or False? All of the following are unique key advantages of advertising in terms of control as part of the promotional mix: what is said, to whom it is said, when it is said, and why it is said. ANSWER: False 21.​ True or False? A major limitation of advertising over publicity is that advertising has credibility issues. ANSWER: True 22.​ True or False? When buyers are somewhat aware of the service or product and have financial resources, advertising can be most effective. ANSWER: False 23.​ True or False? Advertising can be very useful in the later stages of a product’s life to begin bringing back declining sales by making more customers aware of the product or service. ANSWER: False 24.​ True or False? The less observable the tangible features are of a product or service, the more beneficial it may be to use advertising as a key component of the promotional mix. ANSWER: True 25.​ True or False? As media costs on television have risen dramatically, the cost per contact of advertising is far higher than personal selling. ANSWER: False 26.​ True or False? The more that individuals are involved in the decision to purchase a product or service, the greater the likelihood that personal selling over advertising may be a component of the promotional mix for the seller. ANSWER: True 27.​ True or False? E-detailing is classified as personal selling, although it occurs without face-to-face interaction between a customer and a salesperson. ANSWER: True 28.​ True or False? E-detailing can be defined as the asynchronous presentation of goods and services. ANSWER: False 29.​ True or False? Riskier product purchases require that advertising be a greater part of the promotional mix of the seller over personal sales in order to continue to send messages reassuring the potential buyer that there is little risk of purchase. ANSWER: False 30.​ True or False? In the actual purchase stage, personal sales are often more important than advertising. ANSWER: True 31.​ True or False? Personal sales play little role in the post-purchase stage with the buyer. ANSWER: False 32.​ True or False? The greatest weakness of publicity as a tool of the promotional mix is the lack of control over how the message is encoded and the timing of the message. ANSWER: True ​ 33.​ True or False? Public relations has two important roles for healthcare organizations: promoting the good deeds that occur within the organization and crisis management. ANSWER: True 34.​ True or False? The major reason why health care has been hesitant to use sales promotion strategies is because of reimbursement requirements. ANSWER: False 35.​ True or False? For sponsorships to be effective, there should be a degree of congruence between the event and the organization. ANSWER: True 36.​ True or False? A common sales promotion used by the pharmaceutical industry is samples. ANSWER: True 37.​ True or False? Pharmaceutical companies give free samples to physicians, but research has shown that this has little impact in increasing prescriptions for the product. ANSWER: False 38.​ True or False? Hospitals no longer distribute free samples of formula to new mothers in maternity units because there was concern that some of the samples had been expired by the time of distribution. ANSWER: False 39.​ True or False? Pharmaceutical companies have increased the amount of sampling to physicians because the federal government has limited television advertising to consumers. ANSWER: False 40.​ True or False? Under Affordable Care Act regulations, the medical loss ratio required insurance companies to pay out at least 80% of their premiums annually in insurance claims. ANSWER: False 41.​ True or False? Physician sales forces are often used in the growth stage of the product life cycle. ANSWER: True 42.​ True or False? In a push strategy, the manufacturer tries to move their product by working with the intermediaries in the channel of distribution. ANSWER: True 43.​ True or False? Doctor-led discussion groups are an example of a push strategy by pharmaceutical companies. ANSWER: True 44.​ True or False? In a pull strategy, the intermediaries pull the customer to the manufacturer. ANSWER: False 45.​ True or False? A university academic medical center invites physicians in the region to a homecoming football weekend and a morning medical education conference (with continuing medical education credits for attendance). The purpose is to encourage referrals to the academic medical center by reinforcing relationships. This is an example of implementing the push strategy. ANSWER: False 46.​ True or False? In recent years, many pharmaceutical companies have changed their promotional strategies from a push to a pull strategy in terms of their communication approach in order to get physicians to write scripts for their brand of drugs.