SME’s perception of product liability on product innovation of pre-packed food products in Tanzania

Abstract

The Tanzanian food market is saturated with processed food. The study aimed at investigating the perception of product liability rules (i.e. manufacture, design, and failure to warn defects) on pre-packed food product innovation in Tanzania. A randomly selected sample size of 100 respondents was involved in the study. Data were analysed through Exploratory Factor Analysis. Four factors namely defective manufacturing, design defect, failure to warn and product liability costs emerged to be important. Thus, the three dimensions of product liability and one dimension of product innovation emerged from the data. In the end, the study concludes that the product liability- product innovation relationship is much stronger for design defects than the manufacturing and failure to warn (labelling) defects.