Cross-Border Shopping on the European Union Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Market: Determinants of Lithuanian Shoppers’ Behavior in Poland
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease see the attachment for detailed comments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We express our great gratitude to the Reviewers for the thorough assessment and substantive scientific discussion. Analysing the very valuable comments and suggestions of the Reviewers, corrections were made.
Comment #1: The title is well defined and easy to understand. Introduction: The introduction it’s very clear. It elaborates on the abstract, clearly stating what the study aims to achieve. The study aims to identify the factors encouraging and suppressing Lithuanian shopping for FMCG in Poland. This is an interesting gap in knowledge that needs to be investigated based on the reasons given. The study articulates clearly what is supposed to be expected from the article. It starts on elaborating the hypothetical theories that were used to establish factors affecting cross border shoppers, this was verified with a questionnaire, Logistic regression was used to approve or reject the relationship of the model, and finally verified model is provided. The article is logically presented with relevant literature.
Response: Thank you! Your evaluation is very motivating.
Comment #2: Although Table 1 shows clear sample characteristics, the description under the subheading (3.2) it is a bit confusing. There is no clear distinction between sample characteristics and questionnaire development and data collection methods. It is important that these should be clearly separated and not mixed for clear follow up.
Response: Thank you for this insight. We added a new subsection 3.2 describing the questionnaire. Now sample characteristics and questionnaire development and data collection methods are clearly separated.
Comment #3: It is also not clear how the representative sample size per town was determined. The brief description for the sample determination should be given, instead of only giving a reference. G*Power uses a variety of statistical tests.
Response: We extended the description of sample size determination. Collecting data in six different towns increases the representativeness of the survey; therefore, equal sample sizes (50 respondents) were chosen for each city. The sample size was calculated using a Z test for Logistic regression of G*Power, indicating that a sample size of 253 observations is necessary to achieve a statistical power of 0.9 (α err prob 0.1) and the odds ratio of 1.5.
Comment #4: Page 5, Line 213, it is advisable to write values below ten in words in the text. i.e. 2 should be written two.
Response: We checked all the text and changed values below ten into words.
Comment #5: Page 10, Line 431 ‘As the study was not an interventionary study involving animals or humans, it does not require ethical approval.’ In this study the human subjects were used to participate in the study, what does it mean the study did not involve humans?
Response: This was a misunderstanding. “Interventionary studies involving animals or humans” are often provided in medicine or veterinary, also, it can be in marketing, e.g., using positron emission tomography. Also, some studies are not interventionary, however, require touching (e.g., electroencephalography, eye-tracking). In such studies, all the participants are asked to sign their consent before the study. As our study was not an interventionary, we indicated that. However, after a discussion with the editor and your comment we added: “The questionnaire was approved by the Ethic Committee of the Faculty of Economics and Management, Vytautas Magnus University.”
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
After reading the submitted manuscript I’m listing some comments, questions, doubts, and suggestions that I firmly believe can help improve your work.
From the structural point of view of the manuscript:
× The manuscript is structured logically;
× In the Results section I would prefer to see the main results; the rest can be organized in an Appendix section (there are too many Tables in my opinion);
× The sections of Discussion, Conclusion, and Recommendations seem to be repetitive. Consider merging them in one section.
From the content point of view of the manuscript:
× I did not get the lacune in the literature you planned to fill with your work (the novelty).
× What implications do your findings have in terms of sustainability? It was not formulated clearly.
× You mentioned several limitations of your work. What about the long-run behavior? Are the determinants consistent in time? Moreover, did you consider (to be included in your analysis) the seasonality of cross-border shopping for FMCGs (September – December was the time of your conducted survey)?
× Line 101 – I would suggest sections instead of chapters;
× Line 23 and all over the text – I would suggest economic status, or income level instead of material status (it creates confusion with marital status);
× Table 5 – If you state a hypothesis (the null one), and the p-value is less than the threshold (1% or 5%), you have enough evidence to reject it. Try to reformulate the column “Supported” in Table 5. It creates confusion!
As far as I can tell, the topic is interesting to be treated. The methodology is adequate, therefore you can try to convey better your results to the readers.
My best regards!
Author Response
We express our great gratitude to the Reviewers for the thorough assessment and substantive scientific discussion. Analysing the very valuable comments and suggestions of the Reviewers, corrections were made.
Comment #1: In the Results section I would prefer to see the main results; the rest can be organized in an Appendix section (there are too many Tables in my opinion).
Response: Dear Reviewer, we understand your concern here, and we discussed your proposal. However, we would prefer to leave the tables as they are. For some readers tables are the most interesting part of the manuscript as they provide the more complex picture. Moreover, other reviewers did not question the location of the tables with results in the text. Therefore, we decided to leave them in their current position.
Comment #2: The sections of Discussion, Conclusion, and Recommendations seem to be repetitive. Consider merging them in one section.
Response: The manuscript uses the structure recommended by the Editorial Office and separates the discussion from conclusions and recommendations. The authors made it seem more transparent to the readers of the article.
Comment #3: I did not get the lacune in the literature you planned to fill with your work (the novelty).
Response: Thank you for this remark. We have added some sentences to the introduction (lines: 87-91).
Comment #4: What implications do your findings have in terms of sustainability? It was not formulated clearly.
Response: We have added sentences in introduction and in conclusions to better demonstrate the article’s relationship to sustainability.
Comment #5: You mentioned several limitations of your work. What about the long-run behavior? Are the determinants consistent in time? Moreover, did you consider (to be included in your analysis) the seasonality of cross-border shopping for FMCGs (September – December was the time of your conducted survey)?
Response: Thank you very much for this insight. Truly, we didn’t consider this; however, your ideas extend the field of future research. We added the issues in the conclusion part.
Comment #6: Line 101 – I would suggest sections instead of chapters.
Response: Thank you, corrected.
Comment #7: Line 23 and all over the text – I would suggest economic status, or income level instead of material status (it creates confusion with marital status).
Response: Thank you, corrected to “income level”.
Comment #8: Table 5 – If you state a hypothesis (the null one), and the p-value is less than the threshold (1% or 5%), you have enough evidence to reject it. Try to reformulate the column “Supported” in Table 5. It creates confusion!
Response: We have changed “supported” into “status”. We hope that this will not cause confusion anymore.
Comment #9: As far as I can tell, the topic is interesting to be treated. The methodology is adequate, therefore you can try to convey better your results to the readers. My best regards!
Response: Thank you very much!
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsSection 3.3 states "19 characteristics assigned to 5-factor groups (described in subsection 2.1) and 12 factors limiting purchasing decisions distinguished in 4 risk groups (described in subsection 2.2)." which is not clear in the context of the 10 hypotheses stated in subsections 2.1 and 2.2 and the 16 variables analyzed in Table 1. It would be worthwhile to add questions from the questionnaire that addressed the individual factors indicated in the hypotheses.
The factor analysis performed in the text raises questions. For what purpose is it presented in the article? The K-M-O and Bartlett's test were not performed. The purpose of factor analysis is to reduce or classify objects that do not occur in the presented analysis between factors.
Scoring tables 3 and 4 are not sufficiently explained, which makes the evaluation of hypothesis verification difficult.
Some of the hypotheses are set in such a way that they cannot be clearly verified. For example, H6 was not verified, (the impact of two of the six socio-demographic factors was confirmed) and thus the discussion no longer refers to the hypotheses (figure 2).
The direction of impact was not indicated in the discussion - e.g. in H3 (probably) better transportation positively affects cross-border exchanges.
Author Response
We express our great gratitude to the Reviewers for the thorough assessment and substantive scientific discussion. Analysing the very valuable comments and suggestions of the Reviewers, corrections were made.
Comment #1: Section 3.3 states "19 characteristics assigned to 5-factor groups (described in subsection 2.1) and 12 factors limiting purchasing decisions distinguished in 4 risk groups (described in subsection 2.2)." which is not clear in the context of the 10 hypotheses stated in subsections 2.1 and 2.2 and the 16 variables analysed in Table 1. It would be worthwhile to add questions from the questionnaire that addressed the individual factors indicated in the hypotheses.
Response: Addressing the reviewer’s comment, we made several changes and improvements. A new Table 1 was added to emphasize the number of items and their relations with the hypotheses. Also, the wording in the sentence indicated by the reviewer was changed to avoid confusion regarding factors and items. Also, we indicated what particularly was those 16 variables in the mentioned table (Table 3, after corrections).
Comment #2: The factor analysis performed in the text raises questions. For what purpose is it presented in the article? The K-M-O and Bartlett's test were not performed. The purpose of factor analysis is to reduce or classify objects that do not occur in the presented analysis between factors.
Response: Factor analysis was used to reduce the number of variables and detect structure in the relationships between variables, that is, to classify variables. The K-M-O test was used to assess the adequacy of the correlation matrix. The obtained coefficient values authorized to carry out further research procedure. The coefficient values indicate a satisfactory reduction in dimensionality.
Comment #3: Some of the hypotheses are set in such a way that they cannot be clearly verified. For example, H6 was not verified, (the impact of two of the six socio-demographic factors was confirmed) and thus the discussion no longer refers to the hypotheses (figure 2).
Response: Addressing the reviewer’s comment, we have specified socio-demographic characteristics in the H6. The hypotheses are no longer specified in Figure 2, because the depicted model is no longer hypothetical, and represents only the verified relationships.
Comment #4: The direction of impact was not indicated in the discussion - e.g. in H3 (probably) better transportation positively affects cross-border exchanges.
Response: We agree with the Reviewer's opinion that better transportation has a positive impact on cross-border exchange; we mentioned that in the discussion part.
