'It's somewhere here, isn't it'? The provision of information and health warnings for alcoholic beverages sold online in New Zealand and the United Kingdom

Introduction: Alcohol beverages in many countries are required to display health information and warnings on all product packaging, given the individual and societal harm caused by alcohol. It is unclear whether consumers purchasing alcohol online are able to easily view such information. This study examines the presence, type and location of mandatory and voluntary health information and warnings consumers are exposed to when entering online alcohol retail shopping environments in the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand (NZ).

Methods: Using an observational study design, 1407 randomly sampled alcoholic beverages from 14 online alcohol retailers (7 per country) were reviewed to ascertain the visual presence or absence of mandatory and voluntary health information and warnings.

Results: UK online alcohol retailers were more compliant than NZ retailers in showing mandatory health information (e.g., alcohol by volume percentage was visible on 92% of alcoholic beverages sold online in the UK, compared to 31% in NZ, p < 0.001). A similar pattern was noted for voluntary health warnings. Online retailers in both countries had a low proportion of alcohol products with the viewable mandatory information, and voluntary health warnings were rarely present and/or viewable.

Discussion and conclusions: Mandatory health information and warnings for alcoholic beverages are not fully adhered to within the UK and NZ online retail environments, impacting the ability of consumers to make informed purchase decisions. In both countries, alcohol policy needs to stipulate that mandatory health information and warnings should be clearly viewable on the product page and product imagery of online alcohol retailers.