How Can E-Commerce Businesses Implement Discount Strategies through Social Media?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper explores the implementation of discount strategies through social media for e-commerce business. The paper also makes a case for using discounts to stimulate demand in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This, to me, indicates good effort to position this research for relevance in light of the today’s changes in the marketplace. Nonetheless, I have three comments that I would like the authors to consider in order to strengthen the theoretical foundations and contributions of the paper even more.
First, the paper needs to situate itself better on social commerce literature. I would encourage the authors to make a case for the study of discounts. For example, the authors may want to cite Weng Marc Lim who has done a lot of work on online group buying (e.g. business-to-business perspective, consumer characteristics perspective, equity perspective, flow perspective, social perspective, and technology acceptance and continuance perspective, among others). Yet, his works did not look at the discount perspective, thereby indicating a knowledge gap that could be addressed by this research. You may read more of this work which I think is highly relevant for your paper by searching his name on Google Scholar using “group buying” as keywords.
Second, the paper does a really good job in its analysis section, but the resulting implications of their results appear to be lacking. In that sense, I would encourage the authors to consider expanding the conclusions section by including sub-sections, as follows: 5.1 Key takeaways (i.e. main findings from analysis), 5.2 Theoretical implications (i.e. how the findings reaffirm and extend theory), 5.3 Managerial implications (i.e. what should managers do in practice based on the results of the study), and 5.4 Limitations and future research directions (i.e. what are the shortcomings of this study and what should future research do to overcome these shortcomings and build on the findings from this study).
Finally, please proofread the paper as there a number of grammatical mistakes throughout (e.g. “… merchants choose to launching …”).
I hope the authors will find these comments useful to improve the quality of their paper.
Good luck and all the best!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for the author's contribution, but there are still some problems to be addressed.
In lines 31-35 concerning the drop of China's first-quarter GDP, relevant references should be added. Lines 44-48 also need to be explained by citing references or research reports. In the introduction section, improvements need to be made for the discussions on this research’s practical and academic necessity.
In section 3.1. Information Dissemination in Social Media, it seems more to be the author’s own subjective ideas, lacking robust literature support. In Section 3.2. Purchase Behavior in E-commerce, the author classifies the factors that influence consumers’ purchase behavior into environmental factors and individual factors but gives no classification basis. In addition, both sections 3.1 and 3.2 have poor contextual relevance.
The manuscript neither explains its methods used for data collection nor introduces which software is used for analysis.
Sufficient discussion on data analysis results should be made, so it is recommended to add a section of discussion. Moreover, the conclusion section needs to be further enriched. I hope to see the innovation points of this study.
In the end, it is recommended to add more literature citations and restructure the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I am pleased to have the opportunity to review this research paper. This study attempted to explore how can e-commerce businesses implement discount strategies through social media. Although the topic of this research study is interesting, there are still minor changes to be applied.
What is the originality of this research linked to Sustainability strategies? Paper research gap and originality should be better presented at the end of introduction section deeply.
The Literature Review is not enough. There is no analysis of previews articles the authors just summarise similar studies. This part should be improved. What about a Table indicating similar studies?
A Discussion section should be added.
Conclusion. This needs to be more than a summary of the previous sections and also add value. Conclusion section should emphasise and explicitly spell out the contribution to theory that the analysis brings about. Practical implications can be summarised in one paragraph. The same for the limitations and further research.
I advise the following structure for the final part of manuscript:
Discussion
Conclusions
Theoretical implications
Practical Implications
Limitations and future research
I would also urge the authors to read the articles listed below before completing the manuscript revision. The author will understand that the article structure can be improved as well as the methodology and literature review section:
Saura, J.R. (2020). Using Data Sciences in Digital Marketing: Framework, Methods, and Performance Metrics, Journal of Innovation and Knowledge, 1(2020). doi: 10.1016/j.jik.2020.08.001
Du, S., Yalcinkaya, G., & Bstieler, L. (2016). Sustainability, social media driven open innovation, and new product development performance. Journal of product innovation management, 33, 55-71.
Palos-Sanchez, P., Saura, J.R., Martin-Velicia, F. (2019). A study of the effects of Programmatic Advertising on users' Concerns about Privacy overtime. Journal of Business Research, 96(2019):61-72 doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.10.059
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have made all the proposed changes. Overall the article is in good form and suitable for publication after thorough proofreading.
