How Can We Promote Smartphone Leasing via a Buyback Program?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Present the dataset used to describe section 6 Numerical simulation and also to show the characteristics of the data used in this research.

Do the proofread stage to ensure the quality of English

Author Response

We are very grateful to your constructive and encouraging comments. Following your valuable suggestions, we have made a careful revision to improve the presentation of the paper, and all the comments have been addressed carefully. For the convenience of you, we present the comments in italic and our response in the standard form. And we mark the modified part in the main body of the revised article.

Comment 1: Present the dataset used to describe section 6 Numerical simulation and also to show the characteristics of the data used in this research.

Response: Thank you for your valuable suggestions. Following your suggestions, we have added Table 1 to present the dataset used to describe section 6 Numerical simulation. The gross profit margin, Sales and Rental price of new iPhone, Sales price of used iPhone of the dataset can be found in the corresponding websites. Because new iPhone cost is the personal information of the Apple Inc., so we estimate the cost of new iPhone by the following formula: Sales price of new iPhone/ (1+ Gross profit margin).

Comment 2: Do the proofread stage to ensure the quality of English

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to your reading. We have carefully checked the whole article again. Following your suggestions, the writing of the full paper was enhanced by a native English speaker. We hope it will meet the standard of Sustainability.

Again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to strengthen our manuscript with your valuable comments and queries. We have worked hard to incorporate your feedback and hope that these revisions persuade you to accept our submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The author is suggested to go through the following comments.

The author has to do a deep literature review.

Add the paper for further references:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2022.108975

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010090

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-017-9716-2

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-018-0049-0

https://doi.org/10.1049/stg2.12095

The author must modify the abstract. It does not seem to be perfect.

More recent studies from the literature.

Authors must also perform the analysis if the features are reduced then how the accuracy will be affected.

The language of the article is poor and needs to be corrected by a native English speaker.

The references part of the article is not up to date, authors should add more recent literature which obtained good performance from 2021 and 2022

-----------

Author Response

We are very grateful to your constructive and encouraging comments. Following your valuable suggestions, we have made a careful revision to improve the presentation of the paper, and all the comments have been addressed carefully. For the convenience of you, we present the comments in italic and our response in the standard form. And we mark the modified part in the main body of the revised article.

Comment 1: The author has to do a deep literature review.

Add the paper for further references:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2022.108975

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010090

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-017-9716-2

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-018-0049-0

https://doi.org/10.1049/stg2.12095

More recent studies from the literature.

The references part of the article is not up to date, authors should add more recent literature which obtained good performance from 2021 and 2022.

Response: Thank you for your good suggestion. We are very sorry for not adding more recent literature which obtained good performance from 2021 and 2022. As suggested, we have added more recent literature. The literature we have added and their corresponding number are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. The literature we have added and their corresponding number

The literature	Corresponding number
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2022.108975	10
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010090	11
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-017-9716-2	47
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-018-0049-0	52
https://doi.org/10.1049/stg2.12095	2
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031503	48

Comment 2: The author must modify the abstract. It does not seem to be perfect.

Response: Thank you for your good suggestion. Following your suggestions, we have added and revised some sentences of the abstract, in order to make it seem to be perfect.

Comment 3: Authors must also perform the analysis if the features are reduced then how the accuracy will be affected?

Response: Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your good question. And we have thought deeply about this question, chosen to relax the assumption that the resident value of unit used rental smartphones for the manufacturer and the retailer are same, find out some very interesting and Interesting and practical conclusion, and add new section 7 in this paper.

Comment 4: The language of the article is poor and needs to be corrected by a native English speaker.

Response: Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to your reading. We have carefully checked the whole article again. Following your suggestions, the writing of the full paper was enhanced by a native English speaker. We hope it will meet the standard of Sustainability.

Again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to strengthen our manuscript with your valuable comments and queries. We have worked hard to incorporate your feedback and hope that these revisions persuade you to accept our submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this interesting article. 

To give more understanding, I would suggest doing a comparison of the proposed business model with other products such as laptops for example while taking the uniqueness of smartphones into consideration (i.e. short life cycle of smartphones, privacy, changing technologies at lower prices, etc)

As well, the three models need to be discussed within the cultural, legal and economic contexts to better take the right decisions. 

Minor English editing is required. 

Author Response

We are very grateful to your constructive and encouraging comments. Following your valuable suggestions, we have made a careful revision to improve the presentation of the paper, and all the comments have been addressed carefully. For the convenience of you, we present the comments in italic and our response in the standard form. And we mark the modified part in the main body of the revised article.

Comment 1: To give more understanding, I would suggest doing a comparison of the proposed business model with other products such as laptops for example while taking the uniqueness of smartphones into consideration (i.e. short life cycle of smartphones, privacy, changing technologies at lower prices, etc).

Thank you for your good questions. We are very sorry for our negligence to clearly distinguish smartphones from laptops. Different from laptops, whose lessee are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises and their leasing period is usually indefinite, smartphones’ lessee are mainly individuals and their leasing period is usually fixed, for example one year, because their short life cycle and rapid changing technologies. Following your suggestions, we have added the corresponding description in the second paragraph of the Introduction.

Comment 2: As well, the three models need to be discussed within the cultural, legal and economic contexts to better take the right decisions.

Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your valuable suggestions. Just as your say, we have discussed the three models within the cultural, legal and economic contexts, and get some interesting and realistic conclusions. Based on these conclusions, we have added the following text to the description of Proposition 4(1) and the description of Fig. 20, respectively: ①In some developing countries, such as China and India, where consumers usually demonstrate their success by owning products, and thus their acceptance of smartphone leasing is generally low, the implementation of buyback programs is particularly important for both manufacturers and retailers. ②In some developed countries, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, etc., consumers are more environmentally conscious and their acceptance of leasing smartphones is generally high. Manufacturers’ ensuring the smooth implementation of buyback programs by improving their ability to repurpose used rental smartphones is particularly important.

Comment3: Minor English editing is required.

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to your reading. We have carefully checked the whole article again. Following your suggestions, the writing of the full paper was enhanced by a native English speaker. We hope it will meet the standard of Sustainability.

Again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to strengthen our manuscript with your valuable comments and queries. We have worked hard to incorporate your feedback and hope that these revisions persuade you to accept our submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors,

The paper lacks enough integrity. Besides, the theoretical foundations of your study are questionable. It goes without saying that the paper does not fall into the journal's domain. You did not explain the theoretical contribution, the research gap, and many other critical points. Also, you must compare your findings with those of the others.

In sum, I believe that this manuscript must be revised thoroughly and submitted to another journal.

Best of luck!

Needs moderate English language proofreading.

Author Response

We are very sorry that this paper didn't impress you and very grateful to your constructive comments. Following your valuable suggestions, we have made a careful revision to improve the presentation of the paper, and all the comments have been addressed carefully. For the convenience of you, we present the comments in italic and our response in the standard form. And we mark the modified part in the main body of the revised article.

Comment 1: The paper lacks enough integrity. Besides, the theoretical foundations of your study are questionable.

Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your careful work. We are very sorry for our negligence of the theoretical foundations. Following your suggestions, we have added the following description in the Introduction: Based on market competition theory, consumer utility theory and game equilibrium theory, this paper mainly analyzed the effect of buyback programs on the smartphone leasing and selling market, to provide theoretical guidance for the implementation of buyback programs while smartphone rental and sale demand coexist.

Comment 2: It goes without saying that the paper does not fall into the journal's domain.

Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your careful work. We are very sorry for not making it clear how the paper relates to this journal. The article mainly discusses rental, which certainly fits within PSS strategies. As a PSS business model, rental services are a primary means of recycling mobile phones in a formal and timely manner. In this model, the renter offers a smartphone device along with additional services such as maintenance, upgrades, replacements, and customer support. Customers lease smartphones for a certain period of time and pay a regular fee to just use the latest smartphones without having to make a large upfront payment. And the corresponding description has been added in the Introduction, to reinforce the study's connection with PSS and Sustainability, which is the subject for this Special Issue call.

Comment 3: You did not explain the theoretical contribution, the research gap, and many other critical points. Also, you must compare your findings with those of the others.

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We are very sorry for our negligence of explaining clearly the theoretical contribution, the research gap, and many other critical points. The theoretical contribution of this paper is: it mainly analyzed the effect of buyback programs on smartphone leasing and selling market, to provide theoretical guidance for the implementation of buyback programs while smartphone rental and sale demand coexist. The research gap of this paper is: it fills the research gap of how the manufacturer set price when considering buy back used rental smartphones from the retailer leasing and selling smartphones simultaneously. We have added above descriptions in the Introduction. Also, we have compared our findings with those of the others. And add the following description in the Conclusion: Consistent with the conclusion of Xue et al. [34], this result shows that buyback program can benefit all supply chain members under certain conditions.

Comment 4: Needs moderate English language proofreading.

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to your reading. We have carefully checked the whole article again. Following your suggestions, the writing of the full paper was enhanced by a native English speaker. We hope it will meet the standard of Sustainability.

Thank you very much again. We have worked hard to incorporate your feedback and hope that these revisions persuade you to accept our submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors,

I am glad to see the revised version. However, I am not convinced with how you have addressed the issues. The topic is irrelevant to the scope of the journal and there is a need to make your research more relevant.

Best of luck!

Well improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

We are glad to receive your comments and suggestions. Thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise this paper again. We are very sorry that the first revised version of this paper was not good enough.

Every comment and suggestion of you is important to us and is highly valued by us. Following your comments and suggestions, we have revised this paper again, in order to make this research more relevant to the scope of the special issue and the journal. For the convenience of you, we have marked the modified part in the main body of the second revised version and present our work in sections as follows.

(1) Add relevant statements to Abstract

The main results of this study are the follows: Buyback program can increase consumers’ leasing demand. And it has the potential to drive retailers to conduct hybrid selling–leasing transformation and can establish a positive correlation between retailer's profits and consumers’ acceptance of leasing. These mean that buyback program can promote the development of leasing as a sustainable consumption pattern and can be beneficial for resource recycling and urban sustainable development. We have added above relevant statements at the end of Abstract to demonstrate practical significance of the paper and its relevance to the journal.

It is important to emphasize that we have also change the keyword recycle to PSS.

(2) Add relevant statements to Introduction

We have found more data to prove that smartphone purchasing is an unsustainable consumption pattern. 22.7% of Chinese consumers will replace their smartphones in less than a year, and 49.5% of them will leave their idle smartphones ‘hibernating’ at home. This unsustainable consumption pattern causes a serious waste of resources, which is not conducive to the sustainable development of smart urban development. Changing this unsustainable consumption pattern, to recycle waste smartphones in a timely and formal manner, is critical to achieving low-carbon, circular and sustainable smart urban development.

Fortunately, leasing is a sustainable consumption pattern to replace purchasing. Different from selling, the smartphones leased out is owned by leasers. And different from consumers, in order to make more money, leaser will find ways to maximize the value of smartphones. Such as leasing smartphones of different life cycle to different people, working with manufacturers to reuse used leasing smartphones and so on. There is no doubt that if the leasing-recycling-reusing closed loop can be effectively promoted, it can fundamentally solve the problem of smartphone recycling. And what the supply chain members need to do is how they can extend smartphone’s life cycle to promote reuse and support sustainability.

To make more consumers to leasing smartphones, we believe that retailers need to be fully motivated to expand and promote smartphones leasing business. The main purpose of this research is to promote smartphone leasing through a buyback program. One of our key findings is that buyback program has the potential to drive a retailer's shift towards hybrid selling–leasing transformation. Hybrid selling–leasing transformation of the retailer will not only provide more convenience to consumers, but also promote the development of leasing as a sustainable consumption pattern. One of our key findings is that with a buyback program, both the manufacturer and retailer have an incentive to promote smartphone leasing by improving consumers’ acceptance of leasing. As consumers’ acceptance of leasing improves, more smartphones will be rent out, and this will greatly reduce the likelihood of smartphone idleness and will be beneficial for resource recycling and sustainable urban development. Both above key findings can prove that our research is relevant to the scope of the journal.

To make our research more relevant, we have added relevant statements in Introduction based on above work. More importantly, Special issue information reveals that a Sustainable PSS involves a shift from selling products to selling sustainable service solutions. (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/special_issues/Product_Service_Systems_Sustainability). We believe that leasing is essentially a sale of sustainable service, and this study can be considered relevant to this special issue from this perspective.

(3) Add relevant statements to Conclusions

In addition, this paper does not consider the recycling behavior of manufacturer and retailer for smartphones purchased by consumers. When considering this factor, the smartphone supply chain involves a closed loop of selling-recycling-remanufacturing and a closed loop of leasing-recycling-remanufacturing and how to coordinate the relationship between the two is significant for the sustainable development of smartphone supply chain. This is the current focus of future research. To prove that this series of studies have the potential to make a significant contribution to the field of Sustainability, we have added above statements to Conclusions.

(4) Some other works

To make the paper better, we have done some other works. For example, we have redrawn Fig. 1 to make it more beautiful; we have thoroughly checked the article and adjusted some expressions to make the article more readable; we have added more references to make the article more scientific, and so on.

(5) Similar articles

Finally, we have listed some similar articles which have been published in Sustainability and DOI of them are shown as follows.

DOI of similar articles which have been published in Sustainability

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072133

https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416957

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042118

Dear Reviewer, we have worked hard to write and revise this paper, and hope that the second revised version can persuade you to accept our submission. Your response is very important to us. Thank you very much again.

Best regards,

 

Gaidi Tian & Chunfa Li

2023.07.09

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors,

I am satisfied with the revisions carried out based on earlier feedback. Therefore, I recommend your paper for acceptance, subject to the usual final formatting checks required by the editorial office.

Best of luck!