Circular Fashion: Cluster Analysis to Define Advertising Strategies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors are recommended to delve deeper into the concept of Awareness. How has it been measured? What items have been used for its measurement? Which authors have been taken as a basis?

Since these are novel concepts and the 2030 Agenda objective is discussed, the authors are recommended to complete the review of the literature by adding some more scientific papers dated 2022, since there is only one reference for that year.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. In this review letter, you can find how we address all the comments for reviewer 1. We hope that our new proposal will meet your expectations.

REVIEWER 1:

1. Reviewer 1 wrote:

The authors are recommended to delve deeper into the concept of Awareness. How has it been measured? What items have been used for its measurement? Which authors have been taken as a basis?

Thanks for your recommendation, we have added a paragraph from “these transformative … to fashion consumption” to clear the importance of the concept of awareness and the connection to attitudes. In Appendix A, you can find a copy of the questionnaire, where we explain how we measure awareness. The questionnaire is based on Carvalho et al. (2020) and in literature review, Galbreth ad Ghosh (2013), Colasante and Ghosh (2021) and Jia et al. 82020) emphasize the role of awareness in sustainable consumption.

1. Reviewer 1 wrote:

Since these are novel concepts and the 2030 Agenda objective is discussed, the authors are recommended to complete the review of the literature by adding some more scientific papers dated 2022, since there is only one reference for that year.

Thanks for your comments. We added some sentences at the beginning, where we emphasized the role of SDG3 and SDG12 as key elements in SDGS for marketers (de Ruyter et al., 2022). We also highlight  the issue in the discussion part. Besides, we added more updated literature such as Buchel et al., (2022); Blas Riesgo et al., (2022); Milanesi et al., (2022); Peleg Mizrachi and  Tal (2022) among others.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The article deals with an interesting aspect of sustainable development. The aims of the article are logically formulated, the method is adequate to the aim of the article, and the conclusions are understandable. Both "advertising campaigns" and "advertising strategies" appear in the content of the article. What are the relationships between these concepts? Shouldn't "advertising strategies" be included in your keywords? I am wondering about the application values of the research. I propose to emphasize this problem more strongly in the conclusions.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. In this review letter, you can find how we address all the comments for reviewer 2. We hope that our new proposal will meet your expectations.

REVIEWER 2:

1. Reviewer 2 wrote:

The article deals with an interesting aspect of sustainable development. The aims of the article are logically formulated, the method is adequate to the aim of the article, and the conclusions are understandable.

We are very grateful for the interest you have shown in the revision of our paper “Circular fashion: cluster analysis to define advertising strategies”. Your positive feedback has been both a strong incentive for us to continue working on this line of research and a real challenge.

1. Reviewer 2 wrote:

Both "advertising campaigns" and "advertising strategies" appear in the content of the article. What are the relationships between these concepts? Shouldn't "advertising strategies" be included in your keywords? I am wondering about the application values of the research. I propose to emphasize this problem more strongly in the conclusions.

Thanks for all your comments, which have helped us to improve our research. We have included in keywords “advertising strategies”, which fit better into our research. In the conclusions section, we include some sentences, where we identify advertising campaign as a narrower concept to fulfil specific needs within a group and advertising strategies  rather as a wider concept and an integral part of the policy of firms or governments. We include education advertising initiatives as well.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

I'm quite satisfied about your work, but there are some comments to solve.

1) MAIN PROBLEM: in my opinion if you use the concept of CLUSTERING, you must use the dendrograms.

See the following references:

Kassambara, A. (2017). Practical guide to cluster analysis in R: Unsupervised machine learning (Vol. 1). Sthda.

Forina, M., Armanino, C., & Raggio, V. (2002). Clustering with dendrograms on interpretation variables. Analytica Chimica Acta, 454(1), 13-19.

Jolliffe, I. T., Allen, O. B., & Christie, B. R. (1989). Comparison of variety means using cluster analysis and dendrograms. Experimental Agriculture, 25(2), 259-269.

Oksanen, J. (2014). Cluster analysis: tutorial with R. University of Oulu, Oulu.

You must add this structure to your results.

2) Minor problems:

- The methodology should be integrated with theory about dendrograms

- In the methodology you should explain better the data selection process, the data collection process and the questionnaire.

-  I have no idea about: CISIA-CERESTA=> You should explain it/them.

- Table 9. Main characteristics of clusters. => This table should be put in the appendix

- You should think about some different future development of your research. Maybe, you can think about a cross-country analysis or a second wave of the survey.

- there are some missing references, you should read and add the following paper to improve the literature review.

1) Mishra, S., Jain, S., & Malhotra, G. (2020). The anatomy of circular economy transition in the fashion industry. Social Responsibility Journal.

2) Machado, M. A. D., de Almeida, S. O., Bollick, L. C., & Bragagnolo, G. (2019). Second-hand fashion market: consumer role in circular economy. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal.

3) Ferioli, M., Gazzola, P., Grechi, D., & Vătămănescu, E. M. (2022). Sustainable behaviour of B Corps fashion companies during Covid-19: A quantitative economic analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 134010.

4) Colucci, M., & Vecchi, A. (2021). Close the loop: Evidence on the implementation of the circular economy from the Italian fashion industry. Business Strategy and the Environment, 30(2), 856-873.

5) Cappellieri, A., Borboni, E., Tenuta, L., & Testa, S. (2019). Circular Economy in Fashion World. Sharing Society, 112.

6) Colasante, A., & D'Adamo, I. (2021). The circular economy and bioeconomy in the fashion sector: emergence of a “sustainability bias”. Journal of Cleaner Production, 329, 129774.

7) Diddi, S., & Yan, R. N. (2019). Consumer perceptions related to clothing repair and community mending events: A circular economy perspective. Sustainability, 11(19), 5306.

Finally, in my opinion you should think about some Hypothesis testing techniques to test variables of the sample (not mandatory comment, but In my opinion may be useful to understand differences between generations).

To summarize, this is good work that (after some changes) will be ready for this scientific journal.

Have a nice day, good luck!

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. In this review letter, you can find how we address all the comments for reviewer 3. We hope that our new proposal will meet your expectations.

REVIEWER 3:

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

I'm quite satisfied about your work, but there are some comments to solve.

• MAIN PROBLEM: in my opinion if you use the concept of CLUSTERING, you must use the dendrograms. You must add this structure to your results.

The authors really appreciate the proposal made by the reviewer, and therefore, the dendrogram has been included in the paper. Moreover, we include additional information on the double methodology used for the determination of the number of clusters.

The following is a detailed description of the process:

Firstly, a factor analysis of principal components was carried. Then, the criterion used is the number of eigenvalues greater than unity. The results indicate that the most appropriate number of clusters is five. KMO and Bartlett's test was used to support the factorisation.

We performed a hierarchical clustering, from which, the dendrogram was obtained. Based on this, the number of clusters that best represent the classification of consumer behaviour and attitudes is five. In figure 2, a blue line represents the nodes that generate classification groups.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

2) Minor problems:

- The methodology should be integrated with theory about dendrograms

A detailed explanation of this point is included in the previous paragraph. Thanks for your recommendation.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

- In the methodology you should explain better the data selection process, the data collection process and the questionnaire.

Thanks for your inquiries. We have added a copy of the survey as also requested by reviewer 1(Appendix A). The data selection process is through a convenience sample, as explained in the text.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

- I have no idea about: CISIA-CERESTA=> You should explain it/them.

Within the French school (SPAD software of CISIA CERESTA), the combined use of factorial techniques (PCA, MCA or MFA) and then cluster analysis is very common and it is also used for business purposes to launch new products. PCA, MCA or MFA and then cluster analysis is a valuable technique used to find better typologies of individuals (clusters).

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

- Table 9. Main characteristics of clusters. => This table should be put in the appendix

Thanks for the comments. We include table 9 in Appendix B.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

- You should think about some different future development of your research. Maybe, you can think about a cross-country analysis or a second wave of the survey.

Thanks for your recommendations. We have added your recommendations in the future research paragraph and we are now finding potential partners to elaborate a cross-country analysis.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

- there are some missing references, you should read and add the following paper to improve the literature review. Mishra..; Machado…; Ferioli….; Colucci…; Cappellieri....; Colasante...; Diddi..

Thanks for your recommendations. We have added all your proposed literature which has enhanced the quality of our article.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

Finally, in my opinion you should think about some Hypothesis testing techniques to test variables of the sample (not mandatory comment, but In my opinion may be useful to understand differences between generations).

Thanks for your recommendations. In fact, after writing this article and per your recommendations, we are preparing a new article, where we develop some hypothesis and compare generations. We thank you for your recommendations and we hope you can read our next article.

1. Reviewer 3 wrote:

To summarize, this is good work that (after some changes) will be ready for this scientific journal.

We are very grateful for the interest you have shown in the revision of our paper “Circular fashion: cluster analysis to define advertising strategies”. Your positive feedback has been both a strong incentive for us to continue working on this line of research and a real challenge.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

I'm satisfied about your changes.

I have only one final comments: 
IF possible, improve the quality of dendrogram. It is small, it is difficult to read and  understand.

After this changes the paper is ready for publication.

Best

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

we have changed the dendrogram and now we hope it is better to understand and read.

thanks for your help!