Abstract
Firms increasingly collaborate with universities to find innovation success. This research is the first to investigate how consumers perceive university-co-developed products. A series of lab and field studies validates a positive inferential process such that consumers experience products co-developed with a university to be more sophisticated and trustworthy compared to firm-internally developed products or products co-developed with merely another firm. Consequently, consumers are more eager to purchase and more likely to recommend university-co-developed products to others. A field study demonstrates that this effect unfolds even after an actual product trial. Furthermore, an Instagram field experiment utilizing a video that did (vs. did not) refer to the university-industry collaboration brought about higher click-through rates and more pronounced post engagement levels. The studies finally show that the positive university effect (1) is attenuated for consumers with a low belief in science and (2) fully reverses in cases when the co-development focuses on aesthetics (vs. technology). Taken together, this research advances our theoretical understanding of university-industry collaborations by highlighting how and when involving universities as an innovation partner might not only be beneficial for innovation but also marketing purposes.