Food innovation in Northern Ireland SMEs: evaluating perceptions, reformulation and consumer insights

Abstract

The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate food innovation in Northern Ireland (NI)Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs): by evaluating perceptions, reformulation, and consumer insights. The NI food industry have faced many challenges such as external market pressures and perhaps required to create more healthy products to aid with government targets to enable a healthier society. However, the food innovation practices within NI, perhaps would be considered as fragmented, and perhaps a more joined up approach would aid communication. This research reviewed literature on perceptions of food innovation development and compared innovation practices across food companies, including reformulation and food labelling strategies. Furthermore, it examined the associations between the perceived innovation inputs and outputs for success in NI food industry SME’s that used a mixed methods approach (survey and semi-structured interviews, SSI). The findings indicated that product innovation was positive with (54%) reported they had two or more innovative products launched within the last 3 years. The majority of innovative projects were self-funded however indication was made that innovative new product development would not take place if funding was not available. The most important perceived input to food innovation success was management and staff knowledge followed by customer interaction. The most important output was profit and viability followed by market share. Barriers indicated to be suggested around the lack of funding or time consuming to complete funding applications, furthermore external market pressures such as supply chains and skills shortage. The use of external support such as universities and knowledge providers was noted to be of some assistance, although it was indicated that it was time consuming to find the correct one. An experimental sugar reduction strategy in cakes was conducted to assess the impact on cake properties that used sensory analysis. It found that a cake with a sugar reduction of 18% was similar in relation to sensory attributes as the control sample. Sugar replacement samples that had a 42% sugar reduction had significant differences amongst the sensory attributes however inulin replacer worked better than the carbohydrate replacer. Lastly, consumer understanding and opinions of nutrition labelling, food reformulation, and the perceived value of technology in the context of food choice was investigated using a consumer survey(n=83). Around half of the respondents reported an awareness of reformulation with the majority only being slightly familiar with reformulated products. The consumers who partook in the survey indicated the main preferences were price and taste. The likability was positive towards the use of front of pack labelling (FoP) with this as their preferred method of communication. The majority indicated that a food scanner application would be equally as useful as reading food labels across all age groups. The features that may encourage food application use was mostly price, followed by health information then detailed nutritional information. Overall, the major contribution of this research offered food innovation information for NI SMEs and provided experimental information on sugar reduction strategies, whilst consumer views were gained. It helped to provide information that may impact major food stakeholders such as the food industry manufacturers, funders, academic institutes, colleges and government. The findings provided insights into food innovation development, trial data around sugar reduction strategies and consumer views aiding the NI food sector as a whole. Overall, this thesis generated valuable insights for a wide range of food industry stakeholders, however, further investigation using this dataset would support deeper analysis and inform the next stage of research.

Date of Award	May 2026
Original language	English
Supervisor	Omar Nibouche (Supervisor), Maeve Kerr (Supervisor) & Kirsty Pourshahidi (Supervisor)