Bank Reputation and Trust: Impact on Client Satisfaction and Loyalty for Portuguese Clients

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article caught my attention and I appreciate the efforts of the authors to deal with this topic, which is very current.

I have several comments on the processing of the article.

In the literature section, I lack a deeper theoretical definition of terms such as risk - financial risk - types of financial risks, etc., as well as the terms crisis and financial crisis. The author presents more or less the causes and consequences of the events, without understanding and defining the key words: Crisis; Financial conditions; Banks Reputation; Trust; Satisfaction; Loyalties it states. Only trust is defined to the extent necessary.

The author established 11 hypotheses, but in the discussion he only generalizes the conclusions and does not pay attention to each one separately, which should not be missing in an article of this format.

Author Response

I appreciate all the attention given to the review of the article and all the suggestions provided. These are recommendations and contributions that, I am sure, will help improve the quality and scientific rigor of the paper. In the attachment, I respond to the comments made by the reviewers, identifying the changes that have been made to the paper. An updated version of the article is submitted, with the changes made marked in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First, I would like to congratulate the author(s) for this informative piece of research. The paper reads very well from an academic perspective and is well structured. Despite the fact that the impacts of the financial crisis of 2007~2008 have been extensively discussed in the literature, the paper still touches on a significant aspect, which is trust and loyalty. I have a few comments:

1. The title should be reduced keeping the key words only.

2. My major concern is with the methodology. The quantitative approach that utilises an online questionnaire is definitely insufficient per se to collect adequate amount of data and to produce reliable results that can be later on generalised. Full reliance on self-administered questionnaire is lacking specifically to this of research where trust, human factors and loyalty are measured. Consequently, the method should be underpinned by a qualitative approach in order to maximise its benefits and applicability to the academic community. Perhaps considering a triangulation approach in which interviewer-administrative survey is conducted will have very constructive outcomes on the quality of the findings and will surely enhance decisions making and hypotheses testing and validation.

3. I prefer replacing the term "customers" by the term "clients" when banks are involved. 

4. The conceptual model itself has to show/display the acronyms (H1, H2, etc...) which represent the hypotheses under investigation.

5. Though the introduction and literature review sections are very well written in my opinion, there exist some instances where ideas were repeated. This is due to the "longer-than-usual" introduction section. Please remove the redundant ideas or statements, especially those related to trust and satisfaction. Perhaps reducing the introduction section slightly would suffice. 

6. Despite the "all-encompassing" nature and extensiveness of the literature review and the references used, there is a need to incorporate additional contemporary managerial thought and insight to the literature and the discussion sections from the recent literature in order to engage with more persuasive, original, and contemporary input which deals with a relatively old topic like the financial crisis of 2007.    

Author Response

I appreciate all the attention given to the review of the article and all the suggestions provided. These are recommendations and contributions that, I am sure, will help improve the quality and scientific rigor of the paper. In the attachment, I respond to the comments made by the reviewers, identifying the changes that have been made to the paper. An updated version of the article is submitted, with the changes made marked in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Despite the fact that the author(s) have not fulfilled the requirements of the feedback I have provided to the fullest, especially in terms of the methods used, I think the paper has improved. The main points I have raised in my comments were addressed. As I mentioned in my previous review report, I think the topic is worthy of publication and is significant. I have no further comments. Good luck.