Coordination Analysis of Sustainable Dual-Channel Tourism Supply Chain with the Consideration of the Effect of Service Quality
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic is interesting, methodology well defined, and relevant literature used.
Author Response
The topic is interesting, methodology well defined, and relevant literature used.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s positive comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors used the word "sustainable" only once in the title, while it was not used in the abstract and keyword.
- First of all, writing style is very poor. The manuscript should be thoroughly examined and all grammatical errors, typos and other issues should be fixed.
- The abstract of the paper does not clearly describe the innovation of the paper.
- Please retype the mathematical expressions given in equations since they don't seem professional as they are now.
- In experimental section, how to determine the parameters of the proposed algorithm? I suggest the authors to seriously tune and analyze the parameters.
- The results of the research are very clear and the analyzes should be improved.
Author Response
The authors used the word "sustainable" only once in the title, while it was not used in the abstract and keyword.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. “Sustainable” has been added in the abstract (Lines 12-15 and 23-26) and the keyword (Line 27). In addition, "sustainable" issues are added to the Introduction, Literature Review, and Conclusions, respectively.
- First of all, writing style is very poor. The manuscript should be thoroughly examined and all grammatical errors, typos and other issues should be fixed.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We have invited the third-party professional institution (Proof-Reading-Service.com Ltd with Reg. No.: 8391405) to help improve the manuscript and fixed all grammatical errors, spelling errors and other issues.
- The abstract of the paper does not clearly describe the innovation of the paper.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s suggestions. We describe the innovation in Section of Abstract (Lines 23-26).
- Please retype the mathematical expressions given in equations since they don't seem professional as they are now.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s suggestions. We retype all the mathematical expressions with a professional tool.
- In experimental section, how to determine the parameters of the proposed algorithm? I suggest the authors to seriously tune and analyze the parameters.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. We add the explanation of determining the parameters in the experimental section (Lines 522-526).
- The results of the research are very clear and the analyzes should be improved.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. We have reorganized the conclusions (6.1) to make the conclusions richer (Lines 685-729).
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
The topic of article is interesting. The paper addresses an important and currently discussed topic of tourism supply chain and its relation with service quality. However, its content and structure require major modification and enrichment:
- In Introduction section, the authors should include the citation of most current articles concerning the main topic. Some of the articles are out of date (written 20 or even 30 years ago) and citing them in the context of current tourism enterprises need is inappropriate and unprofessional.
- The concept of service quality is described too shorty and sketchy (only one abstract). The authors should present the definition of service quality and developed literature review on service quality in tourism sector.
- The table 1 (List of main references) should be more-developed, as the list of references is much too short. The authors should present broader literature review on supply chain and explain the differences between the structure of supply chain presented in table 1.
- The research gap should be well described on the basis of broad literature review.
- The authors should define the meaning of sustainable tourism supply chain as it is included in the article’s title. It is recommended to outline the relation of article’s topic with the Sustainability journal scope.
- There is no Materials and Methods section, which should include the description of methods and methodology. It should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on published results.
- In section “Model formulation and analysis” there are no references, which are the basis of proposition of models.
- Authors should discuss the results in clearer way and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directions may also be highlighted.
- The Conclusion section is too short and sketchy, The authors should answer the research questions posed in Introduction section.
- In order to prove the practical contribution, in my opinion it would be valuable the theoretical model is verified in the real company.
- The References section should be developed with the current literature concerning the article’s topic and formatted according to journal requirements.
- There are a lot of typos in the text. The formulas are sometimes not legible (for example lines 505-513). Table 4 – the title is not appropriate.
Author Response
1. In Introduction section, the authors should include the citation of most current articles concerning the main topic. Some of the articles are out of date (written 20 or even 30 years ago) and citing them in the context of current tourism enterprises need is inappropriate and unprofessional.
Response: Thanks to the reviewer for reading our article carefully and for making such valuable suggestions. We have updated the literature in Section of Introduction (Refs 2, 3, 7, 8, 18) and Section of Literature review (Refs 41 & 52).
2. The concept of service quality is described too shorty and sketchy (only one abstract). The authors should present the definition of service quality and developed literature review on service quality in tourism sector.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. We cited the definition of service quality (Lines 168-177), and review the relevant literature on service quality in tourism sector (Lines 180-183, 191-194, 195-199).
3. The table 1 (List of main references) should be more-developed, as the list of references is much too short. The authors should present broader literature review on supply chain and explain the differences between the structure of supply chain presented in table 1.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. We added more key related literature to show the difference between this study and the existing related studies (Line 227).
4. The research gap should be well described on the basis of broad literature review.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. Comparing the existing key related literature, we addressed the corresponding differences in supply chain structure (Lines 228-236) and service quality (Lines 243-253).
5. The authors should define the meaning of sustainable tourism supply chain as it is included in the article’s title. It is recommended to outline the relation of article’s topic with the Sustainability journal scope.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We have added the description the 'sustainability' issue in the Abstract (Line 15 and 26), Introduction (Lines 47-48), Literature Review (Lines 191-194) and Conclusions (Lines 727-729, 755-757). The definition of sustainable tourism supply chain was added (Lines 101-105).
6. There is no Materials and Methods section, which should include the description of methods and methodology. It should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on published results.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. A section of research method was added to explain the details of how the research was done (Lines 262-269). We have added the description of Methods based on Stackelberg game (Lines 359-365).
7. In section “Model formulation and analysis” there are no references, which are the basis of proposition of models.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. It has some references support for the formulation of the basic model and the formulation of the extended model (Lines 288 and 300-301)
8. Authors should discuss the results in clearer way and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible. Future research directions may also be highlighted.
Response: A paragraph was added to compare existing literature with this study. (Lines 243-253). The discussion of results was added in conclusions section. (Lines 685-743). From the helps of the reviewers, more further research directions were highlighted. (Lines 781-786).
9. The Conclusion section is too short and sketchy, The authors should answer the research questions posed in Introduction section.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. We have reorganized the conclusions (6.1) to make the conclusions richer and answered the research questions posed on Introduction section (Lines 685-729).
10. In order to prove the practical contribution, in my opinion it would be valuable the theoretical model is verified in the real company.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s suggestion. This study developed a dual-channel tourism supply chain model to simulate the results under the decentralized and centralized decision-making scenario including supply chain coordination. Of course, it would be valuable to test the theoretical model in a real situation. However, without having real data, simulation is the usual and appropriate to test the theoretical model. We put this suggestion into the limitations section as a recommendation for further studies (Lines 781-786).
11. The References section should be developed with the current literature concerning the article’s topic and formatted according to journal requirements.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s suggestions. We have updated the references section and modified its format according to the journal requirements.
12. There are a lot of typos in the text. The formulas are sometimes not legible (for example lines 505-513). Table 4 – the title is not appropriate.
Response: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to review the manuscript. We have corrected all the typos in the text, and retyped all the formulas. In addition, the title of Table 4 has been changes as “The effect of allocation ratio on the profit of each member and the overall supply chain”.
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear authors,
thank you for giving me the opportunity to review your paper. It was enjoyable to read and contributes to tourism supply chain and tourism management in general.
- in line 41 change Tas to TAs
- In order to improve the part on service quality and customer satisfaction please go to https://www.iso.org/news/ref2312.html and relate to ISO standards on that matter.
- It's also worth looking at ISO 21902:2021 https://www.iso.org/standard/72126.html
The paper is of good quality but lacs sustainability aspects. Therefore it should be improved therefore, it should be improved showing how this contribution fits in with the goals of sustainable development.
Author Response
Dear authors,
thank you for giving me the opportunity to review your paper. It was enjoyable to read and contributes to tourism supply chain and tourism management in general.
- in line 41 change Tas to TAs
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comments. We have corrected the typo in the article
1. In order to improve the part on service quality and customer satisfaction please go to https://www.iso.org/news/ref2312.html and relate to ISO standards on that matter.
It's also worth looking at ISO 21902:2021 https://www.iso.org/standard/72126.html
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s information, which provides more information about the service quality. We cited the definition of service quality (Lines 168-174). A sentence about ISO quality management was added in lines 174-177.
The paper is of good quality but lacs sustainability aspects. Therefore it should be improved therefore, it should be improved showing how this contribution fits in with the goals of sustainable development.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. We have added the description the 'sustainability' issue in the Abstract (Line 15 and 26), Introduction (Lines 47-48), Literature Review (Lines 191-194) and Conclusions (Lines 727-729, 755-757). The definition of sustainable tourism supply chain was added (Lines 101-105).
Reviewer 5 Report
Thank you for submitting the above manuscript. This research studies an interesting and important topic, which can provide contributions to service operations management. I have some minor comments for the authors to consider:
- What is the meaning of double marginal effect in Line 608;
- In Section 4.3, there is another decision-coordination decision in Line 430. What is the difference with respect to the centralized and decentralized decisions.
- Why did this study adopt wholesale price contract to coordinate the supply chain? How about other contracts?
Author Response
1. What is the meaning of double marginal effect in Line 608;
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s suggestions. We have added an explanation of the double marginal effect in Lines 675-680.
2. In Section 4.3, there is another decision-coordination decision in Line 430. What is the difference with respect to the centralized and decentralized decisions.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. Another decision-coordination in Line 430 is based on the optimal decisions under centralized system.
3. Why did this study adopt wholesale price contract to coordinate the supply chain? How about other contracts?
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable comments and suggestions. Generally, supply chain contracts include many contacts, such as wholesale-price contract, quantity-discount contract, revenue sharing contract and price subsidy contract. Wholesale price contracts are easy to manage, have low operating costs, and are widely used in real business. Many references use this coordination contract approach. Of course, other contracts can also coordinate the supply chain. Due to the limitation of the length of the article, only one kind of contract coordination is considered. We put this suggestion into the limitations section as a recommendation for further studies (Lines 784-786)
Reviewer 6 Report
In this paper, a tourism supply chain with a pricing decision model regarding the impact of service quality is studied. The author show how to maximize the profits of a tourism supply chain in making contract coordination with multiple business partners.
The topic of this paper is of interest. The method mainly arises from classical supply chain contract and coordination. The structure is clear presented and the writing is good. The following are some detailed comments:
(1)the literature of 2.3 mainly relates to the empirical study. It seems not support the model of tourism supply chain model much;
(2)Figure is a classical structure? Or abstracted from real world case?
(3)generally, we use both pricing strategy and quantity strategy as the decision pair. why the author only consider the pricing in this article?
(4)in such a tourism supply chain, what are basics different from our classical supply chain most?
Author Response
The topic of this paper is of interest. The method mainly arises from classical supply chain contract and coordination. The structure is clear presented and the writing is good. The following are some detailed comments:
1. the literature of 2.3 mainly relates to the empirical study. It seems not support the model of tourism supply chain model much;
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. In Section 2.3, we mainly conducted a review of three topics, firstly, the definition of service quality, then the service quality of tourism supply chain and its impact, and finally, a corresponding literature review on service quality decision models in tourism supply chain. Table 1 summarized nine studies of tourism supply models. Sentences were added to compare previous studies in tourism supply chain models with the current study (Lines 228-236). The paragraph before Table 1 discussed the previous studies in tourism supply chain.
2. Figure is a classical structure? Or abstracted from real world case?
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. The figure is abstracted from real business, especially form many tourism suppliers in China, such as small and medium-sized hotels and tourist attractions. A sentence was revised to explain this (Lines 518-520).
3. generally, we use both pricing strategy and quantity strategy as the decision pair. why the author only consider the pricing in this article?
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s valuable suggestions. The sales quantity of tourism products studied in this study is mainly reflected by the demand function, and the demand is a linear function of the price and the level of service quality. Therefore, this work considers the sales price as a decision variable. A sentence was added to explain this (Lines 347-350).
4. in such a tourism supply chain, what are basics different from our classical supply chain most?
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment. The classic supply chain is mostly based on the manufacturing industry with physical products, while the tourism supply chain is a service supply chain, which is mainly based on services. A sentence was added to explain this (Lines 83-86).
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Significant improvements have been made. But, the problem does nothing about sustainability, please remove this word from the manuscript.
Author Response
Thanks for the reviewer’s comment and suggestion. According to the comments from Reviewer 3, the content of sustainable tourism supply chain was added for keeping the relation of the article topic with the Sustainability journal (Lines 106-112).
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Almost all my remarks were corrected. However still some doubts have to be solved:
I am not really convinced, if the topic of article is related with the scope of journal. The authors should define the meaning of sustainable tourism supply chain as it is included in the article’s title. It is recommended to outline the relation of article’s topic with the Sustainability journal scope. Adding only the word ‘sustainable” is not sufficient. Also the adjective as a key word “sustainable” is not right.
The table 1 should be changed, as it should reflect the content of table.
Author Response
1. In Almost all my remarks were corrected. However still some doubts have to be solved. I am not really convinced, if the topic of article is related with the scope of journal. The authors should define the meaning of sustainable tourism supply chain as it is included in the article’s title. It is recommended to outline the relation of article’s topic with the Sustainabilityjournal scope. Adding only the word ‘sustainable” is not sufficient. Also the adjective as a key word “sustainable” is not right.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer’s comment and suggestion. We have added the definition of sustainable tourism supply chain (Lines 106-112) that outlined the relation of this study with the Sustainability journal scope. In addition, in Section of Keywords, a key word “sustainable” is combined with another key word “tourism supply chain”, which is “sustainable tourism supply chain”.
2.The table 1 should be changed, as it should reflect the content of table.
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. As also suggested by Reviewer 4, the title of Table 1 is changed as “List and comparison of main key related references”.
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors,
thank you for considering my comments and improving the article. The introduced amendments significantly improved its quality. The text is clear and it is very pleasant to read. However, I still have some comments to it, that will further improve it:
1. write Internet with a capital letter in the whole paper;
2. in line 140 after Lv et al. there is no reference;
3. in line 227 please change the name of table 1. to: List and comparison of main key related references;
4. please leave a blank line between table 1. and the text from line 228;
5. in line 263 please change second to secondly;
6. in line 266 please use Present simple form of the verb to analyse instead of Past simple
7. in line 397 shouldn't there be '(...) the service quality of cross price channels are also affected..." instead of "(...) the service quality of cross-channel channels are also affected...";
8. in line 452 the service sensitivity of the competitive channel is greater than the that to the;
9. in line 518 "explained by analysing examples that the figure is abstracted from the real-world case";
10. in line 687 "have a positive effect on offline and offline channel sales prices and channel demand";
11. in line 722 "(3) By designing a wholesale price contract,"
12. in lines 737-738 "this study also contributes, to our knowledge, in showing".
Author Response
Thank you for considering my comments and improving the article. The introduced amendments significantly improved its quality. The text is clear and it is very pleasant to read. However, I still have some comments to it, that will further improve it:
1. write Internet with a capital letter in the whole paper;
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We have modified it in the whole paper.
2. in line 140 after Lv et al. there is no reference;
Response: Thanks for your comment. Actually, Lv et al. in Line 140 in the current version is [31].
3. in line 227 please change the name of table 1. to: List and comparison of main key related references;
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We modified it as you suggest in the second revision.
4. please leave a blank line between table 1. and the text from line 228;
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We modified it in the second revision.
5. in line 263 please change second to secondly;
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We modified “second” as “secondly” in the second revision.
6. in line 266 please use Present simple form of the verb to analyse instead of Past simple
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We modified “analyse” as “analyses” in the second revision.
7. in line 397 shouldn't there be '(...) the service quality of cross price channels are also affected..." instead of "(...) the service quality of cross-channel channels are also affected...";
Response: Thanks for your careful check. We modified “cross-channel channels” as “cross-channel” in the second revision.
8. in line 452 the service sensitivity of the competitive channel is greater than the that to the;
Response: Thanks for your careful check. We deleted it in the second revision.
9. in line 518 "explained by analysing examples that the figure is abstracted from the real-world case";
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We deleted “that the figure is” in the second revision.
10. in line 687 "have a positive effect on offline and offline channel sales prices and channel demand";
Response: Thanks for your careful check. We modified “offline and offline” as “online and offline” in the second revision.
11. in line 722 "(3) By designing a wholesale price contract,"
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. However, we would like to keep “designing” since the word “by” cannot be followed by a verb.
12. in lines 737-738 "this study also contributes, to our knowledge, in showing".
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. We modified it in the second revision.
