Media consumption and consumer belief : understanding the media impact on sales in the pharmaceutical market in China during Covid-19

Abstract

Information from various media channels has significantly affected people’s perceptions and behaviors, and its impact is increasing over time in this era of information. It is thus important to understand the effect of information on people’s perceptions and behaviors, and understand the roles played by different media channels. During the Covid-19, news related to the effectiveness of Chinese and Western medicine has been extensively reported in China, where people have long-held polarized views towards Chinese and Western medicine. How the media influences people’s drug choices in the pharmaceutical market in China during Covid-19 is an interesting question. In this paper, we study the media influence on consumers’ choice of Chinese medicine and Western medicine in the pharmaceutical market by proposing a state-space model and applying the model to a data set that includes sales information from the pharmaceutical market and media report information from different types of media channels. We find that media can change people’s preferences towards Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and that the Non-state mass media has a more significant influence than Social media. We also identify a spillover effect of the information of Covid-related drugs to Covid-unrelated drugs, and find that news reports on Chinese medicine has a more significant effect than news report on Western medicine.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Supervisor	Ying ZHAO (Supervisor)