Movies, stigma and choice: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

Do movies unlock sticky healthcare demand by destigmatizing products and increasing choices? 1 In this paper, we ask this question in the context of Indian pharmaceutical markets. Recent work in public health have pointed to this role (Dorfman and Krasnow, 2014) and development scholars have provided supporting evidence (Dupas, 2011). Related literature has examined the broader economic and social impacts of media through influence on the demand side (DellaVigna and Gentzkow, 2010;DellaVigna and La Ferrara, 2015;La Ferrara, 2016) but it seems the effects of edutainment and related destigmatization on supply-side expansion of choice and product variety facilitated by firms remains under-investigated.