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University-Affiliated Alcohol Marketing Enhances the Incentive Salience of Alcohol Cues
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

University-Affiliated Alcohol Marketing Enhances the Incentive Salience of Alcohol Cues

Bruce D. Bartholow, Chris Loersch, Tiffany A. Ito, Meredith P. Levsen, Hannah I. Volpert-Esmond, Kimberly A. Fleming, Paul Bolls and Brooke K. Carter
Psychological science, Vol.29(1), pp.83-94
01/01/2018
DOI: 10.1177/0956797617731367
PMCID: PMC5771860
PMID: 29160742
url
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617731367View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

We tested whether affiliating beer brands with universities enhances the incentive salience of those brands for underage drinkers. In Study 1, 128 undergraduates viewed beer cues while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Results showed that beer cues paired with in-group backgrounds (logos for students’ universities) evoked an enhanced P3 ERP component, a neural index of incentive salience. This effect varied according to students’ levels of identification with their university, and the amplitude of the P3 response prospectively predicted alcohol use over 1 month. In Study 2 ( N = 104), we used a naturalistic advertisement exposure to experimentally create in-group brand associations and found that this manipulation caused an increase in the incentive salience of the beer brand. These data provide the first evidence that marketing beer via affiliating it with students’ universities enhances the incentive salience of the brand for underage students and that this effect has implications for their alcohol involvement.
 alcohol marketing event-related potentials in-group affiliation incentive salience marketing open data

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