Negative e-WOM Resulting from Political Posts on Social Media: A Case Study of a Small Retailer’s Struggle over Time
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors
The article addresses an interesting and under-researched topic.
However, there are points that I must point out that in my opinion must be improved:
- the writing of the article is a bit confusing and in some parts, such as the introduction and results section, it is very difficult to read. As such, I would suggest that you rewrite it and put the article in prof-reading.
-Why did the authors use interviews and not OCR analysis, it would make much more sense, since we are dealing with negative WOM in Social Media.
- The methodolgy has several flaws, among them, the length of the interviews, how they were conducted, how they were structured, among other topics, it is really very poor.
- The themes with which the data were coded, seem to me very broad, and can imply many different things.
- The discussion and conclusions should be improved, as it is not clear what is the contribution of the study...the "so what?" is missing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a paper addressing an interesting issue by analyzing negative e-WOM and its impact specifically on small retailers. However, I think that the study of a single case prevents the article from offering definitive conclusions, which in turn diminishes its contribution to scholarship.
Precisely because the article is based in only one case, I think the selection of the retailer should be better explained and justified. Why is this case relevant? Why did the authors decide to focus their analysis specifically on this case? A more detailed explanation of the distinctive features of the retailer and more information about the political post which originated the negative e-WOM would be welcome as well. If possible, it would be good to have a literal reproduction of this original political post too. The authors should also provide information on the social media platform in which the e-WOM took place.
In the discussion I think there is room for interesting reflections. For example, the authors explain that “the post that started the fallout was deleted by the owner”, but I wonder if there were any comments from customers before this deletion. If so, can the authors detect differences in the ways customers addressed their criticisms before and after the deletion? Can a recommendation for retailers be made out of this analysis, i.e. whether it is advisable to delete conflicting posts or not? Similarly, can something be said about the fact that the owner did not respond any of the comments? What would the benefits and drawbacks of responding to comments be, in comparison to not responding to them? All these are questions that would set interesting reflections that I think could increase the interest of the paper.
Finally, the authors finish the paper stating that “posting political opinions via social media in this case lead to a loss of sales, customers, and impacted the brand image”, but provide no evidence for it. In case this evidence exists, I think the authors should take more advantage from it and include it in the analysis, as it would enable them to correlate sales’ losses to certain comments being posted. However, if this evidence is not available, the final statement should be erased, and this should appear as one limitation of the study.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The autors made a huge effort. Please check the english for minor errors.
