Blog #5 - Brittney McLaughlin

The focus on DayQuil and NyQuil caused me to think about other cold medications that I commonly see advertised on TV. The one that immediately came to mind was Mucinex, which, like DayQuil/NyQuil, I recall seeing a commercial for during the Super Bowl. In this commercial, the adorably ugly Mucinex mascot is speaking to the audience about Super Sick Monday. In other words, he's trying to sell cold medicine to people he knows aren't even really sick? Whatever - I get it, I guess. The point isn't to make sense, it's to keep the name of your drug in peoples' minds. But then, I wondered, how much would I be paying for this commercial? How much does the common Mucinex user pay for seeing this disgusting Mucinex man waddle around during the Super Bowl?

Due to our conversation in class, I was expecting Mucinex to be noticeably more expensive than the generic nameless "mucus relief." Understanding that typically, the medications made by these big name companies are the exact same as the generic medication that offers the same benefits. The only difference is the Mucinex pays millions of dollars for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl, right? So, I did some research and discovered that Mucinex runs about $0.50/pill, while the generic Guaifenesin "mucus relief" sold under Walgreens' label is $0.33/pill. This is enough of a gap to convince me that Mucinex users are absolutely paying unnecessary money for commercials and designers who created the green blob present in their ads. However, I didn't want to assume that there was such a gap between Mucinex and all generic mucus relief medicines, so I checked Walmart's 'Equate' version of Guaifenesin. Here, it was about $0.45/pill - not so different from the big brand.

I can't say that when you purchase big brands like DayQuil or Mucinex, you aren't paying for advertising, you absolutely are. However, in the example that I explored above, it doesn't seem like that necessarily means that you're paying all that much more. So, why does Walmart charge so much for this medication if they are doing no advertising for it? Because they can? Are they riding on the coattails of Mucinex, knowing that some people will specifically go in looking for Mucinex, see that Equate is $0.50 cheaper, and then purchase the Equate instead?