Trust in Courier Services and Its Antecedents as a Determinant of Perceived Service Quality and Future Intention to Use Courier Service

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The new version of the manuscript with changed title lies with improved theoretical and managerial pertinence. The community of practice key concern is business model sustainability, therefore future intention to use informs strategic decision about both scaling up and business continuity plan.Signaling the ongoing covid-19 crisis , it is rational to anticipate abundant evidence within various empirical boundaries to serve as platform to trigger further research replicability tests.

Furthermore, the new manuscript  gains in clarity for large categories of interested audience.

Some English minor mistakes in new paragraphs (for example row 113-115 in red in the manuscript)

 

Author Response

Authors did additional English editing - proofreading.

 

Please look at article version with Truc Changes style

Reviewer 2 Report

I appreciate all the corrections and clarifications introduced. I consider the one concerning the justification of the relationship between the subject and the area of sustainability to be particularly important. The authors have made it clear now.

One more thing: in lines 454-455  “to measure” has been repeated

The analyzes carried out are very deep. Taking into account the method of asking questions (Lines 373-378 and Table 2) and the analyzes performed, it is still not known on what basis it was determined which variable is the dependent variable and which is the independent one, since each of the statements seems to be independent (Table 2). The Authors did not provide their explanation in the attachement to the revised paper. While hypotheses 1, 2 and 4 are intuitive, it is still not known on what basis it was confirmed that trust in courier service affects the perceived quality (the overall level of assessment of the service quality provided by courier companies) and not the other way around - the perceived quality affects consumer trust (as stated in line 314-319). How you have confirmed the hypothesis about influence (not association) based on the data collected. It would be beneficial, if the Authors could provide a comment on that.

Author Response

Depending on the relationships covered by the theoretical model, one variable can be once a dependent variable and once an independent one.

For example, in the context of H1 and H2, the trust in courier services is a variable dependent on two variables: The usefulness of courier services and Ease of use of courier services. In relationship reflected by H3, the dependent variable is Perceived Service quality and the independent variable trust in courier services.

The structural equations modelling used by the authors allows to examine relationships in models that include variables that are once dependent and once independent. In regression models there is no such a possibility, because there specifically some variable has to be a dependent variable and other variables are independent.

A literature review (307-376) conducted by the authors for the purpose of building hypotheses showed that indeed, as the reviewer suggests, often the relationship between trust and quality of service is in the opposite direction. However, this type of situation is more often encountered when we examine the so-called initial trust, and analyse how the quality of service builds this trust. The authors pointed out that their object of interest is not initial trust, but trust resulting from previous experiences of customers who have used courier services. The authors treated trust as a variable determining the quality of service, just like other authors of Hsu et al., 2014; Ratnasingham, 1998.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

166-167 provider replaces provide

291-292 The authors positively?? verified ...replaced  by

The authors provide evidence about customer -perceived systems quality was positively associated with their trust.

Results and Discussion

Data interpretation and avenues for further research

Contribution to theory...

Contribution to managerial practice&market legislation

For example in the COVID context Customer loyalty becomes a key challenge while service providers and customers have to engage on sharing Machine learning practice to enhance the benefits of technology trust.

How data results and interpretation may influence policy makers to check the reliability of market/sector legislation to address both customer concerns and players competitive behaviour.

Legislation predictability lies with stakeholders sharing risks to enable and relive both service providers and their customers, therefore service quality will be under scrutiny.

Actual( measured) customer propensity to repeat purchase and service providers reactions have to inform policy makers to adjust technology market legislation in order to support its growth.

Contribution to methodology&future research questions

The potential of Machine Learning to influence Customer return visits( and purchases accordingly) seek for relevant trust measurements to minimise the gap of customer expectation after the 1st service usage and actual behaviour to strengthen loyalty.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is properly structured and includes all the necessary parts. The idea of the research problem seems very interesting. The literature review is extensive and provides the necessary basis for hypothesis formulation. There are however several issues that still should be considered in order to improve the quality of the paper.

Suggestions:

The title could be more specific as it does not reflect the actual content of the article. Firstly, the article deals with  "perceived quality", not just "quality" (which poses a significant difference). Secondly, the purpose of the study and the research model is wider than what the title would suggest (actually the title only mentions one of the analyzed relations).

It would be worth pointing out clearly how the undertaken issue is related to the area of sustainability. The reviewer does not question the existence of this relationship, but it would be worth to refer to it directly in the Introduction at least.

The hypotheses are formulated correctly however the theoretical model presented in Figure 1 should be clarified - according to the hypotheses "perceived quality" should be used, not "guality" - the subjective and objective aspect of the concept of quality differentiate the potential research approach and should not be mistaken.

It may be also worth justifying whether the research results confirm the direction of the influence as presented in the theoretical model, or only coexistence.

In the paragraph where limitations are indicated, it is worth considering to report that the study was conducted only in Poland and that only selected factors were taken into account

Reviewer 3 Report

I do not believe this paper falls under the scope of the journal "Sustainability" - it discusses nothing relevant to sustainability issues; it is mostly about customer satisfaction and quality of service. It should be submitted for publication elsewhere.