Consumer Acceptance and Preference for Camel Milk in Selected European and Mediterranean Countries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The Authors have chosen an interesting topic of camel milk, which is a generally accepted and used form of food in many countries, and at the same time considered as a specialty in other regions. This way it is a suitable topic for studies of cross-cultural nature.
In the introduction the Authors refer to the health benefit of camel milk:
“Lines 18-19: It is also used as a traditional medicine to treat several diseases [3,4].”
I think this sentence have to be re-worded. It is generally accepted that stating any medical effect directly to any food or beverage requires a clinical trial, but the referred two documents do not contain that information. One of the papers is about the antioxidant properties of camel milk, the other is about its importance in traditional local medicine.
In the re-phrasing the emphasis should be on the beneficial effects of camel milk and not its use against diseases.
lines 46-48: Companies like Camel-Idée are selling camel milk mainly via pharmacies and online-channels (www.camel-idee.com).
This is a direct link to an online shop. I feel it more appropriate to re-word the sentence without the name and the link of the enterprise.
Lines 73 and 79: I do not feel the use of 3 dots (…) in the beginning and the end of the list.
In Table 2 I do not understand “5.7a2” and “6.1a 6.1a”. I believe both are editorial errors, please correct them.
Table 4 – letters are very small. Probably ‘yes’ and ‘no’ can be replaced by a coding, e.g. 1 and 0.
Line 338 – again a direct link to a company, probably the link should be in the Acknowledgement section.
Lines 377-379 „Consistently across all five markets, health benefits such as treating several diseases, fighting against diabetes and hepatitis, and the advantage of no allergic reactions of camel milk were the most appealing part of the stimulus. – Please add here references if there are medical evidences about these serious diseases and the camel milk. Otherwise this section has to be rephrased.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
First, we would like to thank you for reviewing our paper. In the following we tried to answer your comments and questions and hope to satisfy you with the modifications.
Best regards,
Adriano Profeta
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In the introduction the Authors refer to the health benefit of camel milk:
“Lines 18-19: It is also used as a traditional medicine to treat several diseases [3,4].”
I think this sentence have to be re-worded. It is generally accepted that stating any medical effect directly to any food or beverage requires a clinical trial, but the referred two documents do not contain that information. One of the papers is about the antioxidant properties of camel milk, the other is about its importance in traditional local medicine.
In the re-phrasing the emphasis should be on the beneficial effects of camel milk and not its use against diseases.
We now rephrased the sentences as follows:
Camel milk were also reported to have other potential therapeutic properties such as anti-carcinogenic (Magjeed, 2005; Habib et al., 2013), anti-diabetic (Agrawal et al., 2007), and anti-hypertensive (Quan et al., 2008), and has been recommended to be consumed by children who are allergic to bovine milk (El-Agamy et al., 2009).
lines 46-48: Companies like Camel-Idée are selling camel milk mainly via pharmacies and online-channels (www.camel-idee.com).
This is a direct link to an online shop. I feel it more appropriate to re-word the sentence without the name and the link of the enterprise.
We corrected this.
Lines 73 and 79: I do not feel the use of 3 dots (…) in the beginning and the end of the list.
We deleted the 3 dots at the end of the list
In Table 2 I do not understand “5.7a2” and “6.1a 6.1a”. I believe both are editorial errors, please correct them.
We corrected this. Thank you!
Table 4 – letters are very small. Probably ‘yes’ and ‘no’ can be replaced by a coding, e.g. 1 and 0.
We modified the design with increased letter size.
Line 338 – again a direct link to a company, probably the link should be in the Acknowledgement section.
We deleted the link at the mentioned place and removed it to the acknowledgement section.
Lines 377-379 „Consistently across all five markets, health benefits such as treating several diseases, fighting against diabetes and hepatitis, and the advantage of no allergic reactions of camel milk were the most appealing part of the stimulus. – Please add here references if there are medical evidences about these serious diseases and the camel milk. Otherwise this section has to be rephrased.
Here we did not add a literature source because it was a finding from the focus groups. In order to highlight this we now added "participants" in the sentence.
"Consistently participants across all five markets, health benefits such as treating several diseases, fighting against diabetes and hepatitis, and the advantage of no allergic reactions of camel milk were the most appealing part of the stimulus."
Reviewer 2 Report
The article addresses an interesting and current topic, where the authors seek to analyze consumer acceptance, preferences and attitudes to camel milk based on a cross-country study based on qualitative focus groups with consumers.
The authors define the problem, review the literature and describe the methodological process developed.
However, there are aspects that need to be substantially improved:
- The literature review is quite limited (only 18 references) and outdated (we are in 2022);
- At least two words should be included in the keywords: cross-country study; focus groups
- In the introduction, the authors should present and justify the structure of the paper;
- The structure of the paper is confusing and mixes literature review with methodology. I suggest the following: introduction, literature review, methodology, analysis of results, discussion, conclusions;
- The authors should justify the option for the qualitative study, in particular the focus group
- The focus group should be methodologically justified and supported by good practices (they do not present any reference on qualitative methodology, in particular focus groups. There is specific literature on this type of methodology and method. What care has been taken to ensure the reliability and validity of the information collected?
- The creation of categories and content analysis should be described in advance
- The authors should make a real discussion of the results. This implies comparing the results of the study with the research identified in the literature review.
- Create a specific conclusion section
Good luck
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
First of all, we would like to thank you for reviewing our paper. With the made modifications we hope to address all your comments and questions. You find our described changes in the attached pdf.
Best regards,
Adriano Profeta
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I acknowledge the authors' effort to incorporate, when possible, the recommendations presented, which resulted in a significant improvement of the article.
I accept the authors' justifications regarding the structure of the paper and the difficulty in finding recent and quality scientific articles.
Not wanting to diminish the importance of the research carried out via "Google Scholar", I don't know if the authors considered exploring other scientific databases (for example: B-On; Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, Cinahl Plus with Full Text, Current Contents (ISI), IEEE (ISI), Elsevier, Psychology & Behavioral Science, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports, ABI-Inform, Emerald, …).
