Consumer Preferences of Jalapeño Pepper in the Mexican Market

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Introduction

The introduction is not well structured. The Authors are shifting form production aspects of jalapeno to consumer behaviour but do not clearly highlight what determines consumer behaviour towards jalapeno. What is the rationale for the study remains unclear.

L 80 The aim of the study is clumsily written and unclear. What is meant by relevant variables? What are the research hypotheses? How the results will contribute to reorientation of the existing offer of pepper?  “the aim of this work was to determine consumer preferences for jalapeño pepper, as well as the relevant variables of this highly demanded vegetable in Mexico. This can serve to orient the offer and have a product with better characteristics for consumers”.

L 85-103 The analytical framework is very broad and far too general. It does not refer to the specific aims and methods you used for the study.

Material and methods

Why and how did the Authors tackle the issues mentioned in L 120 “This section investigated the problems and aspects that jalapeno producers must improve on based off on consumer perspective”.

I miss a detailed information on the quantitative research methods used in consumer study. L 145 The questionnaire items were verbally administered by the researchers and was applied in 30 minutes. Was it CAPI?

What are the potential consequences of conducting interviews in the places mentioned? What are the potential limitation of  such selection of particpants? “The information was obtained in the vicinity of commercial establishments, leisure sites, and in public places with a rather large concentration of people”.

The approach to data analysis does not lead to much information on consumer preferences. MDS is a method of visualizing the similarity or dissimilarity between products or brands by mapping them onto a geometric space. It can be used to identify the dimensions that consumers use to differentiate between products or brands.  The resulting map can show which attributes are perceived as similar or dissimilar based on the attributes.

Results

The presentation of the results does not go beyond MDS maps. The description is very confusing because the Authors do not use a common way of describing the results of MDS and refer to the  most valued attributes when making a purchase were price, size, and aroma, in contrast to product origin and shelf life, which were the least valued attributes by consumers.

Table 3 lacks some clarity “Statistical differences between the different geographical regions based on jalapeno pepper consumption by 95%”. What do you mean by differences based on jalapeno pepper consumption?

What is meant by aroma characteristic? How can you interpret these results?

Table 4 is also unclear. What is meant by  “Agro-industrial products (%)”. It is hard to interpret the data.

Discussion

I do not see a clear line of discussion and there are some aspects tackled that go beyond your study e.g. “L 381 In general, it was identified that although the jalapeno pepper is a product with strong culinary tradition and roots, its demand has remained static in recent years”.

All studies have limitations: what the study tell us and what it does not tell us. Limitation section should be added to the discussion.

Conclusions

The conclusions do not bring any meaningful insights. It is rather a summary of some findings.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

As the Authors stated (line 14-15) the aim of the paper was to determine consumer preferences for jalapeño pepper, as well as the relevant variables of this highly demanded vegetable in Mexico. The phrase “the relevant variables of this (…) vegetable” can be ambiguous for the readers. Please, be more specific and unequivocal, when formulating the aim of the study to make it entirely clear. Apart from that, the paper may be of interest to the readers, however, before the possible acceptation for publishing, the manuscript needs to be improved. Below some specific comments are given.

 

Introduction

There were two different level of jalapeno pepper consumption given: 7.2 (line 46) and 17.2 (line 49) kilograms per capita. Which one is correct? Is it an annual value? This also should be clarified.

In order to emphasize the novelty of the study, the literature review should be presented. Some studies have already been mentioned (line 77-78), however, the most important results obtained by those authors should be briefly described. Then the novelty and contributions of the study can be described.

 

Is Analytical framework within the Introduction section or not? It is not clear as the section number has not been assigned to that part of the text body. In my opinion in current form that part is too short to be a separate section. It would be highly advisable to extend this part of the paper and present a more detailed view on previous analyses of consumer behaviour, especially those related to the market of fresh products (fruit and vegetables). Have such analyses been already conducted? If yes, what where the most important achievements in the field? And what about the jalapeno pepper? Has this been under the investigation? Or does the research gap exist here to fill in? Please, clarify that issue.

 

Materials and Methods

Line 149 – it should be clarified that the COVID-19 pandemic is referred to.

The questionnaire used should be included as supplementary material.

 

Results

As far as the sample description is concerned, does Table 1 include the comparison of socio-demographic characteristics in the sample and in Mexico population in general? If yes, there is much more potential in that Table to describe the data. It is also not clear whether the survey is the Authors’ own research or whether it was taken from INEGI (2022). Based on the source under the Table 1 the doubts are on this. It should be stated clearly.

Table 3 on quality attributes required by jalapeno pepper consumers in Mexico also offers much bigger potential to describe the results than it has been already done.

Sections 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 (line 251 – in fact, the wrong numbering is given here, 3.5 would be correct) are extremely short. Does it make sense to have the Results section so much fragmented?

 

Discussion

Consumer segmentation based on geographic region constitutes an interesting part of the study. However, this thread has not been referred to when discussing the results. Why? The rest of the discussion is quite interesting and valuable from the cognitive point of view.

 

Conclusion

It would be advisable to indicate the study implications.

Besides, it is also a good practice to specify the study limitations and directions for further research.

The paper will gain from the additional editing and proofreading.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear authors,

thank you for the opportunity to review your interesting manuscript. I liked the piece overall, however I have a few suggestions to hopefully improve the paper.

1) The introduction is well written and easy to follow, however it remains unclear if the novelty of this work is associated with a consumer or supply chain perspective or both. If the originality and merit is associated with the chain, than the chain under investigation needs more specific explanation. The country situation is well explained. If this works is associated with a consumer perspective- the factors determining preferences are very general, not well chosen and need to be presented in a literature review of its own right. If it is combination of chain and consumer- that needs to be made more carved out and justified. Explain how these two perspective complement each other and add value to the recent body of literature

 

Analytical Framework: This needs to be better aligned with the aim of the work. Very general. Theory choices not well explained or justified

Material and Methods: How was the data collected. Though a consumer survey ( semi-structured) or qualitative interviews. Please elaborate and explain. How was the grouping facilitated ( analysis, based on previous literature)? 

Please elaborate on multi-dimensional scaling and the co-occurance maps. Please justify how this serves to achieve the aim of the study.

Can the results and discussion section please be merged for better readability and clarity.

Conclusion: Can you provide best practice recommandations to involved actors, outline the limitation of this work and provide suggestions for future studies.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

I have carefully read through the revised paper. It can be stated that most of the remarks given during the first round of the reviewing process have been addressed by the Authors. This improved the quality and scientific soundness of the paper. Two issues are still to be addressed. Firstly, research results from the studies [17,18,19,20,21] mentioned in line 74 should be described in more detail to show what has been already investigated and to indicate what research gap is filled with the current study. Prior to that, it would be highly advisable to present a more detailed view on previous analyses of consumer behaviour on the market of fresh products with special emphasis on fruit and vegetables markets. Have such analyses been already conducted? If yes, what where the most important achievements in the field? Then, the chili peppers and jalapeno pepper cases can be discussed.

In my opinion, after implementing the above-mentioned remarks the paper could be accepted for publishing.

It would be advisable to proofread the manuscript.

Author Response

Before responding to your comments, we would like to thank you for your time reviewing the manuscript and writing your review report which, without a doubt, we consider it has contributed to the improvement of the submitted work. In the following sections of this report, we have tried to answer all your doubts and to alleviate your concerns and criticisms. However, the authors remain willing to make any additional changes as required by the reviewer or in case he is not satisfied with our answers.

We proceed to respond to your comments. For your convenience, we first copy your comment and then we respond below.

Please see the attachment

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please kindly see attached review report. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I find this paper in terms of the conducted research valid but practical., It lacks sound theoretical foundation and framework and related methodological justification for it to be considered a scientific contribution. 

Reviewer 3 Report

In my opinion, this is a pretty well prepared paper, although a few points need to be completed:

1.       First of all, I don't really understand what the research problem is. Lines 73-74 suggest that "the objective of this work was to analyze consumer preferences" - my question - why ? Why is this important ? - especially for an international reader. In my opinion, the research problem should be better presented. Besides, "to analyze" - should rather not be the objective of a scientific article. Analysis is done to achieve certain goals (which involve solving the research problem)

2.       I also suggest a better description of the research methodology - in particular, what gave us the use of correspondence analysis and the "multidimentional escalation procedure". There is only one sentence about it, which (in my opinion) does not explain what the research procedure consisted of. 

3.       Could "Dimension 1" and "Dimension 2" (Figure 2, Figure 3) be better characterized? 

4.       typos e.g. 348 "a"; Lack of "." (dot) in line 71

Reviewer 4 Report

The issue is interesting and investigated in the literature, but the manuscript still needs better editing and a coherent manner of formulating ideas. The authors should revise the conclusion so that important results are brought out along with the interpretations, compared with earlier studies. Also, the authors should provide more details regarding the limitations of the study.