Underage drinking is a critical public health concern in the United States, which has not only contributed to youth fatality (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2008), but has also been coupled with other concerns. With the proliferation of low-cost digital alcohol marketing, alcohol advertisers and marketers have been increasingly investing in digital marketing and social media marketing. Despite its adoption of an alcohol marketing self-regulation code (Federal Trade Commission [FTC], 2014), the alcohol industry has been in violation of that code when it comes to social media marketing (Barry et al., 2015a, 2015b). Adopting psychological reactance theory and warning conspicuity and integration literature, the current study investigated the effects of incorporating warning messages on social media alcohol ads by manipulating conspicuity (i.e., font size) and integration of the warning message into Instagram beer ads. This experimental lab study used a 2 (conspicuous warning vs. discreet warning) x 2 (integrated warning vs. disintegrated warning) x 3 (ad repetition) x 3 (order) mixed factorial design (N = 65), with all factors except order manipulated within-subject. After identifying three familiar beer brands (i.e., Budweiser, Bud Light, and Corona Extra) among underage youths, actual ads and ad copies were extracted from the three brands’ Instagram accounts targeting the United States market, and a total of 12 ads were selected and used as stimuli after a pilot study.The findings from this study evidenced the ineffectiveness of alcohol marketers’ current practice, in which alcohol marketers who have followed self-regulation code opt to place warnings that are close to Instagram ad margin and disintegrated from main ad copy, let alone the majority of alcohol marketers who failed to follow alcohol industry’s self-regulation code in terms of their marketing activities on social media. In particular, this study found that beer ads with conspicuous warnings, compared to discreet warnings, were more effective in curbing underage youths’ intentions to consume alcohol. Also, beer ads with integrated warnings facilitated higher level of reactance among underage youths than ads with disintegrated warnings, which resulted in less favorable attitude toward the ad and brand. However, such reactance did not spill over to affect underage groups’ drinking intention. Ads with integrated warnings were shown to be a more effective strategy to curb underage youths’ alcohol consumption intentions than disintegrated warnings. Further, eye-tracking measurements indicated that discreet and disintegrated warnings currently adopted by alcohol marketers were hardly being noticed. This study’s findings will not only provide empirical guidance for the alcohol industry, policy makers, and the public, but also extended the current literature by examining whether the design features of warning messages may elicit potential reactance among underage consumers, as well as the relationship between visual allocation to warnings and cognitive processing.
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