Beyond Procedural Compliance: Lived Experiences of Health Communication Transparency among Filipino over-the-counter Vitamin Consumers

Abstract

This study explored the lived experiences of Filipino consumers as they purchased over-the-counter (OTC) vitamins and encountered advertising qualifiers and disclaimers. Employing a Husserlian descriptive phenomenological design and the analytical procedures outlined by Giorgi (2009), the research centered on how consumers experienced, perceived and made meaning of the regulatory mechanismsintended to promote transparency in health-related advertising. Data were gathered through short, informal, post-purchase interviews conducted in a drugstore in Metro Manila with nineteen (19) adult Filipino consumers. Four themes emerged from the analysis: (1) The Routinized Lifeworld of Vitamin Consumption, describing how vitamin purchasing was experienced as habitual, family-oriented, and mediated by trusted interpersonal authority; (2) Peripheral Perception of Advertising Qualifiers, revealing that disclaimers were consistently encountered as background elements rendered invisible by their size, placement, and peripheral position; (3) Experiential Constructions of Trust, Transparency, and Sincerity, demonstrating that respondents grounded their trust in embodied experience and social relationships rather than in regulatory text; and (4) Between Compliance and Comprehension, describing the essential structure of the phenomenon as an ethical gap in which disclaimers were formally present but experientially absent. The results suggest possible implications for understanding the divergence between regulatory assumptions about disclaimer effectiveness and the lived experiences of consumers in Metro Manila, where disclaimers appeared to function as background elements rather than meaningful communicative tools. These findings point to a possible gap between regulatory transparency and communicative transparency, with serious consequences for development communication, ethical health advertising, and Sustainable Development Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). These findings suggest possibilities for regulatory bodies, advertisers, and development communication scholars to consider communication practices that may be more responsive to consumers’ lived experiences and actual information needs.