“We Like That It Matters!”: Towards a Socially Sustainable Retail Store Brand Experience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- lines 779-822: references are inadequate. The author must add and discuss more references. 

- line 53: A number of studies... suggest adding relevant references within and around consumer/customer/user education and experience design, such as: 

o) McGregor, S. (2005). Sustainable consumer empowerment through critical consumer education: a typology of consumer education approaches. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 29(5), 437-447.

o) Liu, W., Lee, K. P., Gray, C. M., Toombs, A. L., Chen, K. H., & Leifer, L. (2021). Transdisciplinary teaching and learning in UX design: A program review and AR case studies. Applied Sciences, 11(22), 10648. 

o) Burton, D. (2002). Consumer education and service quality: conceptual issues and practical implications. Journal of services marketing.

o) Jung, S., & Jin, B. (2016). From quantity to quality: understanding slow fashion consumers for sustainability and consumer education. International journal of consumer studies, 40(4), 410-421.

- line 63: Most recent trends... why are these important to your research? what are the references? 

- line 83: what is the main research question to lead the sub-questions in lines 159, 193, and 255? 

- why is the netnography approach crucial to this research? does it apply to multiple contexts and cultures? 

- table 1 is way too big. please refer to the mdpi template.

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Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for their precious time in reviewing our paper and providing valuable comments. It was their valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. The authors have carefully considered the comments and addressed every one of them at their best.

- lines 779-822: references are inadequate. The author must add and discuss more references. 17 new references have been added and discussed in the revised manuscript. 

- line 53: A number of studies... suggest adding relevant references within and around consumer/customer/user education and experience design, such as: This has been addressed by adding some of the suggested references, moving references that were already cited in the literature review, and adding new references. 

o) McGregor, S. (2005). Sustainable consumer empowerment through critical consumer education: a typology of consumer education approaches. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 29(5), 437-447. This reference was mentioned later in the literature review and has been moved also in the introduction. 

o) Liu, W., Lee, K. P., Gray, C. M., Toombs, A. L., Chen, K. H., & Leifer, L. (2021). Transdisciplinary teaching and learning in UX design: A program review and AR case studies. Applied Sciences, 11(22), 10648. After careful consideration regarding the nature of the reference, this was not added as not completely aligned with the paper context.

o) Burton, D. (2002). Consumer education and service quality: conceptual issues and practical implications. Journal of services marketing. This reference was mentioned later in the literature review and has been moved also in the introduction. 

o) Jung, S., & Jin, B. (2016). From quantity to quality: understanding slow fashion consumers for sustainability and consumer education. International journal of consumer studies, 40(4), 410-421. This reference was added in the introduction. 

- line 63: Most recent trends... why are these important to your research? what are the references? References have been added and better context to the importance of such trends has been given in the paragraph. In particular, has been highlighted how trends confirm the need to change the retail store and provide consumers with a different retail experience. 

- line 83: what is the main research question to lead the sub-questions in lines 159, 193, and 255? The main research question was added. 

- why is the netnography approach crucial to this research? does it apply to multiple contexts and cultures? This has been addressed by providing better context to the methodological choice at the beginning of the relevant chapter. 

- table 1 is way too big. please refer to the mdpi template. Font has been reduced. However, the table was kept the same as "Sustainabulity" guidelines regarding tables stating "Sustainability has no restriction on the maximum word count or number of Figures/Tables included in the text, provided that the text is concise and comprehensive." 

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the topic is interesting, the manuscript needs to be changed. Below I provide comments:

1. References are poor. The theoretical background of the topic should be refined.

2. Conclusions require improvement.
3. The description of the research methodology is very laconic, there is no indication of research questions or research hypotheses.
4. The legitimacy of the choice of the topic should be expanded.

 

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for their precious time in reviewing our paper and providing valuable comments. It was their valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. The authors have carefully considered the comments and addressed every one of them at their best.

1. References are poor. The theoretical background of the topic should be refined. This has been addressed. 17 references were added and further discussed in the manuscript. The theoretical background has been refined, and further context was provided about main trends, and relevance of the study against the main literature. 

2. Conclusions require improvement. This has been addressed by adding a limitation and future research section. 
3. The description of the research methodology is very laconic, there is no indication of research questions or research hypotheses. This has been addressed by providing further contextualization to the methodological choice. A main research question was added at the end of the Introduction, while sub-questions guiding the analysis were already presented (and derived from) the review of the literature. 
4. The legitimacy of the choice of the topic should be expanded. This has been addressed. The need for the study has been better framed by further contextualising main trends and better discussing key elements of the literature. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper seems to be more of a case study.  So, it needs more references to support the

arguments.  

The authors can conduct an hypothesis test to find out if the

tweets or reviews can significantly affect retail store functionality.

 

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for their precious time in reviewing our paper and providing valuable comments. It was their valuable and insightful comments that led to possible improvements in the current version. The authors have carefully considered the comments and addressed every one of them at their best.

The paper seems to be more of a case study.  So, it needs more references to support the arguments.  This has been addressed more references have been added and discussed both in the introduction and in the literature review to better frame and contextualise the study. 

The authors can conduct an hypothesis test to find out if the

tweets or reviews can significantly affect retail store functionality. This is not in the scope of this study at the actual stage. However, a future research section was added in the conclusion chapter. It would be interesting to further test answers to research questions through in-store data collection with different brands. 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author has made adequate revision and updates to the mentioned issues.