ATITUDE DO CONSUMIDOR SOBRE MEDICAMENTOS: COGNITIVA OU AFETIVA? CONSUMER'S ATTITUDE ON MEDICATIONS: COGNITIVE OR AFFECTIVE?

The knowledge about the components of consumer's attitude toward medicines helps researchers and managers to solve several marketing problems. Some advertising models recommend matching appeals (rational or emotional) to product consumer's attitude (predominantly cognitive or predominantly affective). However advertising practice seems to disagree to such recommendation. This could be the case of the advertising of medicines targeted to the consumer. It uses few rational appeals, while attitude to- ward medicines is apparently cognitive. But empirically nothing is known about that attitu- de of the Brazilian consumer. In this context, the main objective of this research was to evaluate the components of consumer's attitude toward medicines. A survey was under- taken that confirmed the cognitive component predominance. But, surprisingly, attitude was cognitive-affective for people with health problems. Results have implications on to the management of advertising of medicines.