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With the increasing dependence on market-based distribution of health-care resources in the USA, spending on health-care service advertisements directly targeting consumers has also increased. Previous research has shown that the ads fail to deliver information deemed essential by regulators. Nevertheless, the attitude of consumers toward health-care service advertising has been more positive than negative. The purpose of this study is to create a taxonomy of advertising information features to better describe the relationships between information features in the advertisements and consumer attitudes toward them.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 128 health-care consumers in a western state in the USA.

Factor analysis generated seven groups of information features. Among them, information features about access, cost and quality of care were rated as most helpful, whereas providers’ clinical qualifications and communication were rated least helpful. The advertising attitude measure was validated to contain two subscales, one regarding health-care service advertising and the other regarding physicians who advertise. People who highly rated the consumerism features had more positive attitudes toward health-care service advertising and people who highly rated provider clinical qualification features had more negative attitudes toward advertising physicians.

This study made methodological improvements in health-care service advertising research that would be crucial for its theoretical development. It also shed light on consumer characteristics and perceptions about information features that could influence their attitudes toward health-care service advertising.

The Chairman of the Representative Body of the British Medical Association, Dr Alexander Macara, is Consultant Senior Lecturer in Community Medicine (Public Health Medicine), University of Bristol; Co‐Director of the World Health Organi‐zation Collaborating Centre on Environ‐mental Health Promotion and Ecology; an elected member of the General Medical Council and a member of Gloucester Health Authority; and Secretary‐General of the World Federation for Education and Research in Public Health. He is a former Treasurer of the Faculty of Com‐munity Medicine and former Chairman of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee.

The purpose of this work is to elucidate how price, brand cues and customer value are related, and to explore the influence of price and brand cues through service quality and perceived risk on customer value, focusing specifically on Taiwan.

Samples were collected using a questionnaire which assessed the quality of our measurement efforts by investigating reliability and validity. We then compared our hypothesized model with a rival model based on the overall fit, parsimony, and percentage of model parameters that were statistically significant.

Service quality is found to be positively affected by brand cues, whereas perceived risks are negatively influenced by price cues. Exactly how customer value is affected by the service quality and perceived risk is considered. Brand cues notably indirectly affect customer value through service quality, whereas price cues notably indirectly affect customer value through perceived risk.

For future research, how other external cues may influence perception of quality and risk with extrinsic information should be discussed.

In practice, bank managers can hone the relevant cues and optimize investments to raise service quality or lower consumers' perceived risk.

This study provides a new perspective of the “structural” relationships among price and brand cues, service quality and perceived risk.

A nation‐wide survey of hospital providers was conducted in an effort to determine the type and level of promotion and advertising agency utilization. The study indicated that a majority of the hospitals surveyed are engaging in some form of advertising activity. Survey results further showed agency usage was highly correlated to hospital bed size. Additionally, contrary to previous research, hospital ownership status (for‐profit/not‐for‐profit) was not found to significantly affect agency utilization. Specifics about hospital/agency relationships are presented.

The study aims to investigate consumers' attitudes toward advertising by medical professionals, and how the attitudes vary among different demographic groups.

A survey using quota sampling was conducted. Altogether 1,297 adults aged 20 or above in Hong Kong filled in an online questionnaire in March 2012.

Consumers' attitudes toward advertising by medical professionals were in general favorable. Respondents reported that advertising by medical professionals provides consumers with information about the services and qualifications of practitioners. However, consumers were worried about misleading information in these advertisements. Respondents perceived strongly that advertising by medical professionals would lead to an increase in the price of services. Younger respondents and respondents with higher education were more sceptical toward advertising by medical professionals.

Medical professionals should put emphasis on providing consumers with relevant information of their services, expertise, and qualifications to assist consumers' information search. They should refrain from using price appeal.

This is the first study to examine consumers' attitudes toward advertising by medical professionals in a Chinese context.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Sales management; Promotion; Product management; Marketing research/customer behavior; Sundry.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management/Sundry; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution.

Examines ethics in the health care industry from the perspectives of investors, employees, patients, competitors and the environment. Ethical behaviour in the health care industry is essential and desirable; however, determining which behavioural actions are ethical and which are unethical is difficult. Although never will everyone agree on specific ethical standards, everyone should agree that setting ethical standards is vital. Therefore, administrators of health care institutions and health care providers should work together to establish codes of ethics which define boundaries for ethical behaviours in the health care industry.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Product & Brand Management is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Pricing; Promotion; Marketing research, customer behavior; Product management.