Purchase Intention and Satisfaction of Online Shop Users in Developing Countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for submitting your paper to Sustainability. I enjoyed reading your paper and found the research topic very important, especially examining consumers’ online purchase intention in developing countries in the post-COVID era. I believe the findings of this study can contribute to the literature with new understanding of online consumer behavior in a different context.

 

Below are the suggestions for your consideration in further improvement of the manuscript:

 

1. In the research background, you mention the focus is on SMEs selling clothes online. This is a very specific context and there should be some particular factors affecting online consumer purchase intention that are different from other general online shopping context. You mention the important role of trust but it is also very general. Is there any other unique factors that can distinguish this study from other general investigations on online shopping behavior?
2. In the research model, you propose e-satisfaction will affect e-value. Since the dependent variable is online purchase intention, I assume consumers will make decisions based on perceived value of online shopping and satisfaction will form after consumption. It is not logical that consumers form satisfaction before perceived value and purchase intention. Please think about this hypothesis again.
3. The convenient sample is online consumers who made online purchase before. This will bias the results because these consumers already decided to make purchases online and they had initial trust and relatively high perceived value of the websites. It is required to survey users who did not make any online purchase at small online clothes shops.
4. What are the items used in the survey questionnaire? Did you copy the entire instruments from prior studies or adapt from prior studies? It is better to list the measurements in the paper.
5. In the data analysis, the correlations among the key variables in Table 3 are all higher than 0.6, which means these variables are highly correlated. You need to take measures to address the multicolinearity issue and the common method bias that often occurs in a single survey study.
6. What are the theoretical and practical contributions of this study?

Author Response

Dear reviewer, kind regards.
We appreciate your kind remarks which were all considered for the improvement of this manuscript.

Thank you.
The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall the study is conducted well. However, I have the following comments. 

Typo in the title "the online shops in developing countries" written twice. 

Write one paragraph about the structure of the remaining paper in the last part of the Introduction.

Hypothesis H1 to H5 statement should be mentioned after each explanation of the factor in Section 2. 

What are the practical implications of the study? Write these in the Discussion. 

What are limitations of the study? Write these after conclusion. 

The following related references are missing regarding trust and purchase intention. The authors want to include the following in the literature.

•  Gender-based iTrust in e-commerce: The moderating role of cognitive innovativeness. Sustainability, 11(1), 175.
• Individual level culture influence on online consumer iTrust aspects towards purchase intention across cultures: A SOR model. International Journal of Electronic Business, 12(2), 142-161.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, kind regards.
We appreciate your kind remarks which were all considered for the improvement of this manuscript.

Thank you.
The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All my previous comments are now addressed.