Market Commonality and Competition in Communities—An Empirical Study Based on Bidding Data of the Construction Market
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have conducted an interesting research on developing a competing relationship network model in China. The research is suitable to be published in “Buildings” after some improvements. My comments are as follows.
- In the abstract, the research gap and the necessity for conducting this research should be highlighted. More than half of the abstract is related to the findings, while this part can be shortened and other parts should be highlighted i.e. research gap, some details of the methodology of the research, and contributions.
- The are many old references in the first paragraph of the introduction which should be replaced by newly published ones to show that these statements are still applicable to the current market.
- The numbering of subheadings is confusing. Please revise it to make it easier for the reader to understand.
- Some of the indicators used in the equations are not defined in the text. Please check all equations.
- There are some “Error! Reference source not found.” in the text which is due to an error in using a reference manager/ citing any figure/ Table. Please fix such errors in the whole manuscript. It made the manuscript difficult to follow as the citations to the Figures are not clear.
- Line 328, spell out all numbers less than 10. E.g., instead of 2, write two.
- Figure 3 should be more discussed. Explain what a small and large circle means in this Figure.
- The authors have a section named Findings and another one named Results. What is the difference between the results and findings in your research? I recommend authors revise these headings to make them clearer.
- The limitations and future work should be added/ presented clearer in the conclusion.
- The authors should mention the generalization of the findings. Are these findings related to China only? Or is it applicable to other regions? It should be stated in the discussion and/or conclusion sections.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: In the abstract, the research gap and the necessity for conducting this research should be highlighted. More than half of the abstract is related to the findings, while this part can be shortened and other parts should be highlighted i.e. research gap, some details of the methodology of the research, and contributions.
Response 1: Following the comments and suggestions, the abstract of the paper has been revised to highlight the research gap, objectives and research methods.
Point 2: The are many old references in the first paragraph of the introduction which should be replaced by newly published ones to show that these statements are still applicable to the current market.
The numbering of subheadings is confusing. Please revise it to make it easier for the reader to understand.
Response 2: These references and numbering have been improved, and we expect to meet the requirements of the reviewers.
Point 3: Some of the indicators used in the equations are not defined in the text. Please check all equations.
Response 3: This error has been corrected, and the fonts of some indicators have been checked and updated.
Point 4: There are some “Error! Reference source not found.” in the text which is due to an error in using a reference manager/ citing any figure/ Table. Please fix such errors in the whole manuscript. It made the manuscript difficult to follow as the citations to the Figures are not clear.
Response 4: This error was unforeseen and has been corrected by typing in the serial number directly.
Point 5: Line 328, spell out all numbers less than 10. E.g., instead of 2, write two.
Response 5: I apologize for the grammatical error. Those numbers have been replaced and this rule of academic English writing will be kept in my mind.
Point 6: Figure 3 should be more discussed. Explain what a small and large circle means in this Figure.
Response 6: Line 373 to 380, the explanation has been supplemented.
Point 7: The authors have a section named Findings and another one named Results. What is the difference between the results and findings in your research? I recommend authors revise these headings to make them clearer.
Response 7: The section originally named "Result of data" has been renamed to " Data analysis ". The section explains the chart's meaning and the hypothesis test's results, but it does not include a comprehensive and in-depth discussion.
Point 8: The limitations and future work should be added/ presented clearer in the conclusion. The authors should mention the generalization of the findings. Are these findings related to China only? Or is it applicable to other regions? It should be stated in the discussion and/or conclusion sections.
Response 8: These missing parts have been added to the last paragraph.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In this paper, the authors analyze the competitive environment and competitive strategies available to construction firms. This analysis is performs based on the theory of market commonality. The paper is well presented and adequately describes the objective and results. However, it would be interesting to include some graphics to illustrate both the methodology and the results.
Minor typos:
- The title of section 1.2 should start in upper case.
- Review the citation style
- There are some problems with references in pages 7, 8, 12.
- Improve the quality of figures.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: The title of section 1.2 should start in upper case.
Response 1: This error has been corrected.
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Point 2: Review the citation style.
Response 2: Due to carelessness, we didn't pay enough attention to the requirements of the journal. We apologize for the error and have corrected it.
Point 3: There are some problems with references in pages 7, 8, 12..
Response 3: After the manuscript format conversion, there were some problems in the reference to figure in Microsoft Word. These issues have been checked and updated.
Point 4: Improve the quality of figures.
Response 4: Do you mean there is something wrong with the format of the icon? Or is the picture not clear enough? If you mean the latter (for example, there are many dense dots in Table 3), this is because it contains over 1000 small circles representing over 1000 enterprises. If further modification is necessary, please indicate the problem and we will handle it as soon as possible.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
I went through your article meticulously and came up with the following points. I hope these points would be helpful for your future work.
a- Introduction and Literature review are so fragmented. You did mention many points pertinent to market commonality and competition in different industries without pointing to the construction industry. It would be best if you wrote your L.R following a general-to-specific trend.
b-There is not a specific and obvious research problem that innovated you to this research. What were the research aim and objectives?
c- Once you finish your L.R, you need to address what factors/ sub-factors you have reached.
d- You have formulated hypotheses in your study. How did you come up with these hypotheses? Hypotheses are more attributed to the deductive research approach; however, the drafted L.R lacks this trend.
e- The solution method is not clear. You have addressed the secondary source of data in your study, bid-winners from 2015-2018, which is more like a consultant report than scientific research. Is it reliable to come up with a scientific conclusion with secondary data analysis? How is it possible to generalize the results?
Regards,
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1: Introduction and Literature review are so fragmented. You did mention many points pertinent to market commonality and competition in different industries without pointing to the construction industry. It would be best if you wrote your L.R following a general-to-specific trend.
Response 1: Indeed, many industries were involved in the discussions of the first paragraph of the introduction, which is used to pave the way for the appearance of the competition in the construction industry in the second paragraph.
In the literature review, we tried to explain the existing research results by the route of "existing problems - Theoretical Interpretation", and then we put forward the research gap. We hope that this logical order is appropriate.
According to your opinions, some modifications to the L.R. have been made to clear the logical framework above. We hope you can be satisfied..
Point 2: There is not a specific and obvious research problem that innovated you to this research. What were the research aim and objectives?
Response 2: We revised the final section of the introduction and the last paragraph of the literature review to highlight the aim and objectives of the research. Briefly speaking, the purpose of the research is to understand the competition pattern of the construction market more comprehensively. The goal of the research is to reinterpret the market competition situation from the perspective of enterprise competition interaction.
Point 3: Once you finish your L.R, you need to address what factors/ sub-factors you have reached.
Response 3: This content has been supplemented at the end of the literature review. In addition, we tried to summarize in each paragraph of the review，and do preparation for proposing the following problems and assumptions.
Point 4: You have formulated hypotheses in your study. How did you come up with these hypotheses? Hypotheses are more attributed to the deductive research approach; however, the drafted L.R lacks this trend.
Response 4: Indeed, the hypothesis part of the manuscript does not involve research methods but puts forward the hypothesis of empirical problems based on the market commonality theory. In the next chapter, we specifically discuss research methods and tools to complete logical relationships.
Additionally, because the research methods used are widely used in social network analysis, they are purposefully omitted from L.R. We appreciate for your understanding.
Point 5: The solution method is not clear. You have addressed the secondary source of data in your study, bid-winners from 2015-2018, which is more like a consultant report than scientific research. Is it reliable to come up with a scientific conclusion with secondary data analysis? How is it possible to generalize the results?
Response 5: Our data source is the public website of bidding records of Chongqing municipal government, which is open to everyone. Under current Chinese law, except for a few projects involving national security or small-scale projects, all other projects (including private projects) need to disclose their bidding records. It's hard for everyone to collect all the project bidding activities in a municipality with a population of 60 million in the past few years. Considering the proportion of China's state-owned economy in the national economy and the laws, we have every reason to believe that this data and model can represent the competition pattern of Chongqing's construction market in the past few years.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have addressed my comments and the manuscript is ready for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed the comments raised by the reviewer.
Reviewer 3 Report
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