User-designed disclosure, whether fans or consumers: Signaling innovation across technological vs. non-technological contexts

Firms increasingly disclose the authorship of their product designs, highlighting when offerings are “ fan-designed ”. Yet existing research has focused almost exclusively on firm-level outcomes of such disclosures, leaving unclear whether they also shape product-level perceptions, how authorship cues translate into purchase intention, whether fan-specific wording outperforms more generic consumer-designed labels, and whether these effects vary across product categories. This research investigates the communicative and perceptual consequences of such fan-designed disclosures defined as public statements that assign authorship of design decisions to fans. Drawing on signaling theory and heuristic processing, three experiments examine whether, how, and when these disclosures shape market responses. Across studies, attributing authorship to fans rather than the company elevates both perceived firm innovativeness and perceived product innovativeness, the latter mediating effects on purchase intention. This is a pathway not previously demonstrated in the user-designed literature. Disclosing that products were designed by fans rather than consumers produces equivalent outcomes when credibility and process rigor are held constant, indicating that user authorship (not the specific user subtype) is the operative cue, thereby challenging predictions implied by lead-user research. Furthermore, the effects of user-designed disclosure are stronger in technological categories, where product performance is harder to evaluate ex ante and design cues become more diagnostic, connecting the user-designed literature to classic work on processing routes and cue diagnosticity. We refine theory on user-designed disclosure and offer managers concrete guidance on what to say, how specific to be, and where such messages most effectively signal innovation.