Analysis of Food Supply Chain Digitalization Opportunities in the Function of Sustainability of Food Placement in the Western Balkans Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please avoid acronyms in the title;

The abstracts must inform explicitly the findings and the implications of the findings: who may gain what and why upon your results? What valuable insights does the study provide? What is the research method? I believe it is a survey, but you should state it.

Please strongly avoid lumped references such as [1, 2] as they do not contribute to other researchers that may employ your study to triangulate findings. Avoid also acronyms without explanation in the text. State the complete meaning in the first appearance;

Please complete your reasoning relying on more refs and deriving from your discussion a research gap in the body of knowledge to be bridged. Why your study is important? Please explicitly enunciate your research gap and derive a research question in the introduction. A brief search on Scopus upon keywords may evidence you have indeed a gap in the knowledge. Your study should bridge such gap.

Please remove … The work consists of several chapters. … It is unnecessary.

When you state that … 92% of the total costs .. you should delimit to … According to [16], 92% of the total costs ... to avoid the impression that this is an universal reality;

I believe that after (and including) the part … Based on the literature review ... a new subsection 2.1 apply;

The research question should be one and only one and should appear in the introduction, in order to allow the reader to define if he or she will or not read the article. Your second research question is a derivative of the first, a single specific, not general purpose of the study. Please amend;

Strongly avoid refs such as  … Previous studies [1, 2, 32-44], Readers should wish to triangulate your results. Perhaps a table called Related studies with individual contribution would be a better solution;

When you state … The dependents variables were 324 assessed using a standard Likert scale (0-disagree; 5-strongly agree) through three 325 statements…. You must present the entire questionnaire (see https://doi.org/10.1080/10429247.2018.1522220, exhibit 4 and 6, and do something similar). You should also perform a factor analysis to investigate cross-loadings and weak-loadings. For instance, in Training and retraining of employees, you have an alpha much higher than in other constructs, which may mean excess of indicators. You also have two hypos rejected, which is for me surprising. Perhaps if you identify and remove cross-loaded and weak indicators of your sample, such results could change. Please consider.  

The analysis is fine, but in the conclusion lacks the implications. Please inform who, in the real-world, can gain what and why upon your findings.

 

You have indeed a good job done. Provided such not-too-hard-to-perform amendments, it can be published. Congrats 

Author Response

Dear reviewer 
Thank you for your comments, questions and suggestion. 

I think that paper is right now much better than its first version. All suggestion and comments by you have been incorporated into the text. See the paragraphs in red colour in word doc. in attach.

Best regards
Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The following improvement suggestions were made:

Line 14-Abstract “tracking food placement” à traceability

Line 17: “training and retraining of employees”à continuous training of employees

Line 23: “FSC management should implement in order to improve a more efficient implementation of the” rephrase suggested in order to avoid repetition of “implement/ implementation”

Line 63, 173 and elsewhere in the text: “ the authors [9, 14, 15]”… It is unusual to use “the authors” when referring to documenting studies, so I suggest replacing them with “<first author> indicated/suggested/ commented that…”

Line 65: (IoT, BT, AI) the abbreviations were not explained before

Line 67: “Food Supply Chain (FSC) “ the abbreviation was used before, it should be explained  just the first time it was used

Line 84: “in the territory of WB” explain the abbreviation

Lines 93-101: “The work consists of several chapters….” This kind of presentation is suited for a PhD thesis, but not for an article.

Line 127: “timely (7P) delivery” the abbreviation is not explained

Line 130-131: “20 to 60% of produced food is wasted and lost along the FSC. In absolute terms, this is about 1.5 billion tons of food products for human consumption.” I suggest reevaluating the value indicated as approximation, as the first sentence indicate a large interval (20-60%), while the second sentence indicates only one corresponding value (1.5 billion tons) which could not correspond to both 20 and 60%.

Line 160: IoT and AI were previously used and explained

Line 173- 180: “The authors [33] state  that BT solves specific problems in the marketing of food, such as more efficient collection  of information about food, collection of data on its nutritional composition and  composition of substances, records of wrong and/or late orders, records of expiration dates of business contracts between FSC participants, recording information on the transportation of food and raw materials along the entire chain, transparency of the disposal or destruction of returnable packaging and non-use of food, creation of smart 1contracts, creation of databases, etc.”

Reference [33] refers to automotive industry, not food industry, so ideas presented in lines 173-180 should be rephrased.

[33] Vuković, V.; Tran, A. D.; Marić, R.; Rashwan, A.; Henningsen, S.; Sliwa, M.; Ubiparipović, B. Blockchain in supply chain 753 management in automotive industry: Systematic literature review. Strategic Management 2023. (online first) 754 [https://doi.org/10.5937/StraMan2300044V].

Line 193: SCM abbreviation is not explained

Line 349-350: “Through the coefficients of Cronbach's alpha, Skewness, and Kurtosis (Table 2), the  validity of the selected scales was confirmed.” Minimum value for Cronbach’s alpha in order to confirm validity and its reference should be added.

“Table 3. Descriptive statistics” Further details regarding the data should be included in the title of table 3

Line 616-624: The first part written in Conclusions presents reality situations and author’s view on them. The Conclusion of a research study usually addresses own research results resumed as conclusions. In this view I suggest skipping lines 616-624 and keep just the part related to this particular study and future prospects.

 

The link to the questionnaire should be made available. 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your comments, questions and suggestion. 

I think that paper is right now much better than its first version. All suggestion and comments by you have been incorporated into the text. See the paragraphs in red colour in word doc. in attach.

Best regards
Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In introduction section (lines 63-71) the authors state: “…the work aims to analyze and define incentives for the implementation of modern technology and digitalization of the Food Supply Chain (FSC) in the function of sustainability of the food retail sector of the Western Balkans (WB) region. Based on empirical research, the importance of key indicators for the implementation of the digitalization process will be tested….”

The manuscript is very interesting and well written but room for improvements there exists mostly in regards the quality of presentation.

My only suggestions to the authors are:

1) You could give a clearer explanation of the concept of “sustainability” you use, for the readers;

2) In the conclusions section, you could avoid mentioning the confirmation of research hypotheses and focus on generalizations for the academic community and the practitioners.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your comments, questions and suggestion. 

I think that paper is right now much better than its first version. All suggestion and comments by you have been incorporated into the text. See the paragraphs in red color in word doc. in attach.

Best regards
Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Ok