Consumers’ Attitudes towards Differentiated Agricultural Products: The Case of Reduced-Salt Green Table Olives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

I enjoyed reading your article. The topic of consumer health awareness and its impact on purchasing decisions is a very important research area. I assess the conducted research as a significant contribution to the theory of consumer behavior.

The methodology is solid, with clearly defined goals, hypotheses and research methods. I have no objections here. You cited the limitations of the small sample size and its narrow spatial scope as limitations of your study. I agree with this statement. You presented your research results convincingly. Their discussion could be further developed by expanding the literature to at least 50 references.

I would also like to highlight more tips for healthy food producers in the context of marketing activities. How does your research benefit them? Can these benefits be considered only at the microeconomic level (enterprises: producers, trade) or also at the macroeconomic level (health, food, agricultural policy)?

I think the order of parts 4 and 5 should be reversed. Discussion first, conclusions later. The proposal to change the order of chapters to discussion before conclusions may improve the readability and logic of presenting the results.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to express my sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Your contribution is significant for the improvement and development of this paper. Below are all the actions taken in the manuscript. 

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Efstratios Loizou

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall the article's topic is relevant and important. I would like to highlight to following suggestions:

- The abstract in actual form is a kind of introduction. In the abstract, the methodology, the way of handling the research, and the results are not described well.

- Introduction, from lines 66-71 and 83-87 are suggested to rethink, because these lines are appearing in word-word is another article.

- Materials, methods, and the questions numbers are not clearly declared. There were pilot tests, which is nice. I see that there were 331 answers (the minimum size was declared 323), but the representativity level is not mentioned. It would be necessary, to know the answers relate to the total population because without it the relevance of the results would be different level. I read in the conclusion in lines 337-340 the limitations of the research, but actually all the results limited only to the actual dataframe. The mistyping of Cronbach's alpha (131-136) suggested to check.

 

Results. The results highlight the representation problem of the dataset, the level of 18-30 ages seems to be high, and also the education level (higher education, MSc) seems to be higher to the population.  In tables 2, 3 and 4  I suggest to add the medial value also, to show the typical value.  The use of Bivariate Analysis is good idea, but a scatterplot-based cluster visualisation would be more understandable visualisation.  In chapter 3.6 I suggest to mention, that all the results are strictly related to the actual dataset, and a significantly bigger dataset may change it. 

Conclusion. It conclude the research well, and the research limitation is highlighted also.

Discussion. In my point of view some parts of it more related to the introduction or the conclusion chapter.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to express my sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Your contribution is significant for the improvement and development of this paper. Below are all the actions taken in the manuscript. 

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Efstratios Loizou

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript entitled “Consumers’ attitudes towards differentiated agricultural products: the case of reduced-salt green table olives” deals with an interesting and important topic; however, because of the specific product, it is rather marginal. But it is an even serious problem that the manuscript has several flaws which will be detailed below.

First, the title contains “differentiated” agricultural product; in marketing, this term means a more general differentiation, let it be a differentiation built on the ingredients, the design, the packaging, the communication, the after-sales services, or even the image.

Second, the Introduction contains an insufficient literature review; much more research studies have been conducted closely related to this topic and much more should be referred to when developing your hypotheses. Another serious problem of this section is that most of your hypotheses (i.e., H1, H2, and H5) are self-evident. In case of H5, the problem can be overcome if you reword the hypothesis to be more specific, containing the specific product you examined. At the same time, H5 should be more specific, containing only that one characteristic you examined. Regarding H3, wording should also be changed: “most important target market” is too general (moreover, target market of what?), it should state something about willingness to purchase or other variables you examined directly. Besides, the paper’s contribution should not be placed at the beginning (2^nd paragraph) of the manuscript, it should be at the end (preferably in the Conclusions section). Moreover, the contribution stated here slightly contradicts the aim stated later (and in the abstract). The sentences in lines 51-56 are not related, there is no logic that leads the thinking of the reader forward smoothly.

Third, pilot study is not supposed to be used “to define the sample of the main research” but to finalize the questionnaire, clarify/delete/add questions, if necessary, based on the feedback (Materials and Methods section). It is not clear what the study population’s size was that was used to calculate the sample size, what the sampling and contact methods were exactly, and how/in what respect the sample could be “a representative part of the Greek population”. The source of the statements in the questionnaire is also missing. The discussion of validity and reliability is too wordy, they are expected to be known by the reader. You can exclude cases/respondents and not questionnaires (lines 134 and 136). Scale reliability acceptance level should be supported by the literature. I would not say this is an “interesting” methodological mix (lines 137-138), rather it is very common to start with descriptive analysis and then continue with more advanced statistical methods. x² is Chi-square in fact, not x-square (use the symbol Chi or write its name).

Fourth, in consumer behavior research, sample distribution is usually placed in the Materials and Methods section and not in the Results section, since it is not the result but only the “material” which we use in our analysis. You should include the distribution of the study population in Table 1; and you should prove your statement about its representativeness statistically. Indicate the sample size in the title of tables and figures in this form (n=??). When summarizing the results of Table 2, be careful to highlight the fact that the results do not reflect the reality but only self-declaration of the respondents (e.g., “61.60% of consumers have good knowledge about healthy eating” is not true, you can say only that 61.60% of respondents believe they have good knowledge about healthy eating). Tables 2-4 should contain the standard deviations as well (means without st.dev. are misleading). It would be more legible if the lines of these tables were arranged in descending order according to means. The title of Figure 1 is not complete; the figure shows the probability of purchase, not the purchase per se. It is not clear if willingness to pay a premium price (from extremely unlikely to extremely likely) and the exact WTP in euros were asked both (because Figure 1 contains only the first results, but the paragraph below the figure contains euro sums). If yes, make it clear in the text. Further questions: Why were only 8 variables used in clustering? And why those 8 variables? Did you conduct a tasting session as well? (Implicitly this conclusion can be drawn based on the statement “Change of purchase decision after product trial”; however, it was not even mentioned in the Materials and Methods section.) When describing the clusters, you should describe them by demographic variables as well. Moreover, your statements about the degree of characteristics should have been statistically proven; in other words, are there any statistically significant differences between mean values of the 3 clusters? (You should have used ANOVA and post-hoc tests for that.) Table 6 would be more legible if it were arranged in descending order of importance values. Hypothesis testing subsection is too monotonous, you repeat the same sentences again and again; moreover, you should not have to mention H₀, it is enough to provide significance levels. Another huge problem with this subsection is the “descriptive test (explore means)” that is only comparing frequencies or mean values arithmetically, but not examining if they are statistically different or not (if I can understand). Here, you should have studied the adjusted standardized residuals that show exactly where significantly different values are in cross tabs, or you should have used t test (or nonparametric counterpart). The two parts of H3 appearing here were not mentioned in the Introduction section. In case of H3, “among the most important” is not the same as “the most important”, so this hypothesis cannot be retained based in the provided information. Table 7 is unnecessary; its information is redundant.

Fifth, in consumer behavior research field, Conclusions section usually follows Discussion section; the reason for this – among others – is that e.g., future research directions cannot be found only after primary research results are compared with previous studies’ results in the Discussion section. Despite your statement, this research does not indicate that industries and the research community has turned to innovative actions (lines 334-336), since these were not examined in the present paper. The results’ generalizability does not necessarily depend on the sample size but on the representativeness/sampling method.

Sixth, in the Discussion section you refer to previous results that consumers perceive that reduced-salt foods would not be tasty; it would be advantageous if you compared this result to your primary findings. What substitutes of salt could you mention that are more favorable to human health and not alter the taste of food (lines 365-366)? Be more precise in wording, you cannot state that “the participating consumers are willing to buy…” or “they are even willing to pay a premium price…”, since these statements are true only for given parts of the sample.

 

References no. 23, 24, 25, 26  are not related to the topic of the paper at all; although  are cited in the methodology section, it seems that they are not absolutely necessary, since descriptions of these methods are available from other sources.

There are some typos and grammar mistakes in the text, see, e.g., lines 23, 208, 209, 274, 275, 282, 287, and 288.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are some typos and grammar mistakes in the text, see, e.g., lines 23, 208, 209, 274, 275, 282, 287, and 288.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to express my sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Your contribution is significant for the improvement and development of this paper. Below are all the actions taken in the manuscript. 

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Efstratios Loizou

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The study lacks background, motivation, and significance; in other words, what is the purpose of this research, and has no prior researcher addressed this issue?

 2. This study is notably lacking in literature support.

 3. What is the specific process of sample collection?

 4. Can the sample represent the distribution of the Greek population?

 5. The research hypotheses are inconsistent with the research objectives.

 6. The "Discussion" section should precede the "Conclusion."

 

7. There is a deficiency in practical implications, academic significance, and research limitations.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

A few grammatical errors

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to express my sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Your contribution is significant for the improvement and development of this paper. Below are all the actions taken in the manuscript. 

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Efstratios Loizou

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I do not recommend placing the research hypothesis in the first chapter. Additionally, this study still lacks research contributions in terms of both practical and academic implications.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 Minor editing of the English language required

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to express my sincere thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Your contribution is significant for the improvement and development of this paper. Below are all the actions taken in the manuscript. 

Thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Efstratios Loizou

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf