Are Customers Always Right? The Importance of Sincerity and Keenness in Creating Retail Sustainable Development
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript needs to be revised as follows:
1. Lines 54 to 67 (two paragraphs of the indroduction) are without any references !! The presented text, which is ok!, should have at least 5 related references which will support the statements.
2. Sections 1.4 and 1.5 too many "historical details" with no significant merit for the research project implemente: Lines 112- 168 should be merged to a comprehensive text of 10-15 lines with appropriate reference too ofo course.
3. Number of participants in the research: is it only 15 experts, as stated at line 216? If yes a proper explanation should be added for such a small number of participants
4. THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE!: The discussion is inadeduate! it shoulkd be axpanded on the results of all the dimensions of the AHP index of the research!!! and not in thw two most important findings. Even at the abstract such conlcusions should be stated in brief.!!!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are herewith responding to the questions and comments in your letter of March 3, 2023 and attaching an updated issue.
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.
Sincerely,
Ting-Chung, Huang
Manuscript ID: sustainability-2240765
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Are customers always right? The importance of sincerity and keenness in creating retail sustainable development
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Author(s) of the manuscript entitled "Are customers always right? The importance of sincerity and keenness in creating retail sustainable development" sent to Sustainability MDPI Journal, please find below my concerns and recommendations.
The topic of you article is very interesting, but the paper needs some improvements:
1. Within the Abstract, at the rows 19 - 20, you say: "He has created sustainable development in the retail industry." As I understand, you talk about "sincerity". Thus, you should replace "He" with "It" at the beginning of the sentence.
2. The AHP acronym appears at the rows 17, 26, 187, 189, but it is first described at the row 191. Normally, this acronym should be described at its first appearance in the text. Please revise and correct this issue.
3. The Introduction should be splitted:
- the Introduction itself should contain the definitions and the descriptions of the following important aspects: the research gap, the research question(s), the research goal.
- after the Introduction, I recommend you to include the Literature Review section and here you should have the sub-chapters: Customer Service Evolution, Frontline Salesperson, Online-Merge-Offline Service Features, The Service Quality Model, The SNAKE ROSES allusion. These sub-sections are now included in Introduction, but they should be moved in Literature Review.
4. In the Literature Review you should also include the following relevant resources: https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710813 (online and offline retail perspective), https://doi.org/10.15611/aoe.2022.1.11 (customer behavior and social media), https://doi.org/10.3390/bs13010005 (e-commerce in retail), https://doi.org/10.3390/jtaer16040064 (e-commerce in the supply chain). By including these references, you will widen the general context of your research proposal.
5. At the end of the Literature Review chapter, you should also define and describe the research hypotheses. Every modern article has at least one research hypothesis. I tried to find it in your manuscript, but at this moment, it isn't defined very clear.
6. Rows 214 - 215, you say: "Upon discussion with experts, two were deleted, and ten were revised, leaving 47 final indicators used in the analysis." But in the table 2 (row 245) there are only 46 indicators. Please revise and correct it. The same remarks for table 3.
7. In chapter "2. Materials and Methods" you describe the methodology for obtaining the data from the experts. Please also specify the place(s) and the period of time when you conducted the interviews.
8. Please address the above recommendations one by one, so that your manuscript proposal is improved.
Dear Author(s),
Please consider all the above remarks as being constructive recommendations in order to improve the general quality of your manuscript proposal.
Kind Regards!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are herewith responding to the questions and comments in your letter of March 3, 2023 and attaching an updated issue.
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.
Sincerely,
Ting-Chung, Huang
Manuscript ID: sustainability-2240765
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Are customers always right? The importance of sincerity and keenness in creating retail sustainable development
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The revised manuscript is now OK to be published as it is I
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your encouragement and support, reviewers. Your guidance has been immensely beneficial to us, and we are deeply grateful for it. Once again, thank you for your guidance on the journal.
Sincerely,
Ting-Chung, Huang
Journal name: Sustainability
Manuscript ID: sustainability-2240765
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Are customers always right? The importance of sincerity and keenness
in creating retail sustainable development
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Author(s),
I have read the revised version of your manuscript proposal and I have the following recommendations. Please carefully address them one by one.
1. First of all, within the Introduction at the rows 60 - 62 you say that: "Thus, we hypothesize that: the service quality framework is Sincerity, Neat, Attentiveness, Keenness, Empathy, Reliability, Optimism, Steadfast, Expertise, and Store Policy ten dimensions." According to the scientific rules, you should validate (or not) this research hypothesis. I recommend you to include a distinct paragraph in the "Discussions" chapter and explain if this research hypothesis is validated or not by your research results.
2. As I already told you, the Literature Review chapter should be enriched. Thus, I recommend you to include in you work the following relevant resources: https://doi.org/10.3390/jtaer16040064 (e-commerce in the supply chain), https://doi.org/10.15611/aoe.2022.1.11 (customer behavior and social media), https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19074378 (live streaming e-commerce), https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10131547 (customer satisfaction).
3. In the chapter "3. Results" at the rows 229 - 230, you say that "From the literature review, he compiled 49 indicators to reflect the attributes of front-line retail services." Please revise. Who is "he"?
4. At the row 281 you have "Table 3. SNAKE ROSES framework". For the dimension "Neat", in the column Sub-Dimensions, you have "Chin-Chieh". I don't understand what "Chin-Chieh" is. Please revise.
5. The same remark for the table 4.
Kind Regards!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for inviting us to submit a revised draft of our manuscript entitled, " Are customers always right? The importance of sincerity and keenness in creating retail sustainable evelopment " to Sustainability. We also appreciate the time and effort you have dedicated to providing insightful feedback on ways to strengthen our paper. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we resubmit our article for further consideration. We have incorporated changes that reflect the detailed suggestions you have graciously provided. We also hope that our edits and the responses we provide below satisfactorily address all the issues and the reviewer have noted.
To facilitate your review of our revisions, the following is a point-by-point response to the questions and comments delivered in your letter dated 13 March 2023.
Explanations to Reviewer 2 Round 2:
We apologize for not meeting the reviewer's requirements in the first round of replies. We hope this more rigorous reply will meet with your approval. Detailed answer with attachment.
Best Regards,
Ting-Chung, Huang
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Author(s),
I appreciate your work and I consider that you successfully addressed all my constructive recommendations from the previous rounds of review.
Now I have only one minor recommendation: please interchange the subsections "5.3. Directions for future research" and "5.4. Limitations".
Kind Regards!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your careful review and valuable feedback on our paper. We sincerely appreciate your support and encouragement.
We are grateful for your minor recommendation to interchange the positions of our paper's "5.3. Directions for future research" and "5.4. Limitations" sections. We will make the changes needed to our article. We also appreciate your overall evaluation of our paper, which is crucial to us.
Thank you again for your valuable time and feedback. We have now interchanged the positions of the "5.3. Directions for future research" and "5.4. Limitations" sections as per your recommendation and resubmitted them to you.
Best regards,
Ting-Chung, Huang
