Myths and Realities of Retail Shopper Behaviour towards ‘Sustainable’ Brands

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article raises an interesting and important topic. The article conducts an extensive literature review.

I have the following suggestions:

Please clearly include the purpose of the study and the research methodology in the abstract.

The article is missing Conclusions, although I understand that there are summary elements in the Discussion section, but in my opinion it is better to separate them. Therefore, I suggest the Discussion section - possibly expand it and additionally create a Conclusions section.

In the Conclusions, I propose to emphasize the added value of this research and write down the limitations of the study. It may also be worth clearly describing the recommendations for sellers resulting from this study.

Author Response

Please see attached file for response to reviewer 1 comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Approaching a theme of sustainable marketing in which the myths and realities of the behavior of retail buyers towards "sustainable" brands are analyzed is a reality of the current moment of maximum interest for the specialized scientific literature. The paper is done and structured appropriately, very well documented and supported by a rich bibliographic and current material, using a material and a method that corresponds to the investigated field. To be appreciated is the originality with which the paper is carried out, which is why it will have an important contribution to the enrichment of information for the specialized literature regarding sustainable marketing.

This research aimed to address and seek answers regarding the vision of retail buyers regarding sustainable brands, which according to previous studies represent myths rather than concrete reality. It can be appreciated that the topic chosen for the study is an original and relevant one for the field addressed and which addresses a relevant category, namely: retail shopper.  Compared to other works published in this field, the study carried out has as a novelty element, a new approach, more realistic, original and adapted to current requirements.

From the evaluation of the paper, it emerged that there are tables in which the source is not mentioned and it needs to be added. It would also be appropriate to add the conclusion section.

Regarding the methodology, this is presented far too widely, I believe that certain aspects addressed here can be used in the results section, because the simple presentation of the tables with the few explanations does not seem to me to be enough.  As well as the methodology was developed, the content of the information presented in the results section I do not consider to be relevant enough for the field addressed.

 I recommend revising the discussion section in such a way that the conclusions reflect the aspects related to the question posed for the study based on the evidence obtained from the information analyzed and argued by the results presented.

The bibliographic resources used are consistent and appropriate for the field chosen in the realization of the paper.

 As for the figures, both those in the content of the paper and those in Appendix A did not mention the source of the information.  In tables A1, A2, A3 and A4 in Appendix A there is a mistake in the numbering of the years, the number 4 appears twice in the last two years.  And why are there only 3 years in table A3?

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Myths and Realities of Retail Shopper Behavior Towards ‘Sustainable’ Brands

This is a well-argued and readable paper on an interesting topic. It is concerned with the marketing strategy for repeat purchasing of commodities with apparently sustainable properties. Two basic laws of marketing science: brand user profiles and double jeopardy are first outlined. The first, brand user profiles, explains that competing brands will have customer bases that share the same demographics and attitudes so that for someone to be a potential buyer of a sustainable commodity they need only to be a buyer of that category of goods.

Double Jeopardy means that the main variation between brands lies in their market shares. So that small brands have fewer customers who buy less often. Neither of these ideas supports the assumption that repeat buyers of sustainable commodities are in some ways special that results from their commitment to sustainability.

These laws of marketing science are used in the paper to test two beliefs: (1) that sustainable brands appeal to a particular type of shopper and (2) that retail shoppers are more loyal to brands that claim to be sustainable. The authors do provide citations for these beliefs but it is unclear why they would be widely held given their apparent contravention of the well supported laws mentioned earlier. It would be useful if the authors could discuss in more detail the reasons why some have advocated these apparently contrarian beliefs. An issue that follows from this is why these are expressed as ‘beliefs’ rather than hypotheses to be tested. Is it because the validation of ideas in marketing science uses a methodology that is unfamiliar to researchers used to more standard hypothesis testing procedures based for example on regression and sample error.

The basic analytical and empirical tool used is the Dirichlet model. Since this is so different from the conventional statical approaches to evidence evaluation familiar to many working in the sustainability field such as regression analysis and hypothesis testing using sampling distribution properties, the explanation of the key elements of the marketing science could be better explained. A good discussion that must certainly be familiar to the authors that could be used to enlarge the explanation of the marketing science approach is:  Goodhardt, G. J., Ehrenberg, A. S., & Chatfield, C. (1984). The Dirichlet: A comprehensive model of buying behaviour. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), 621-655.

In judging the results of their studies, the authors employ mean absolute deviation (MAD) measures comparing Dirichlet model predictions with actual outcomes. To evaluate belief 1, the authors discuss “the number of significant deviations” and to evaluate belief 2, the authors state “the deviation between the observed and theoretical values for both penetration and average purchase frequency of a  brand is above 0.5% or below -0.5%, it is considered significant”. It is difficult to know what the authors mean by “significant” in these contexts since it appears not to be related to the standard concepts of statistical significance used in confidence interval estimation and hypothesis testing.

This paper, which is in general attractive to read and persuasive in its arguments, needs to clarify issues such as these in order to makes its finding comprehensible to researchers not trained in marketing science but well-versed in conventional hypothesis testing procedures.

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for making the corrections according to my suggestions. In my opinion, the article can be published in this form.

Reviewer 3 Report

I have read the revised submission and carefully noted the authors' responses to my original queries. I am impressed with the responses and the indication of further follow up citations, which widened my own knowledge.