Swipe to Sustain: Exploring Consumer Behaviors in Organic Food Purchasing via Instagram Social Commerce

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The proposal about “Swipe to Sustain: Exploring Consumer Behaviors in Organic Food Purchasing via Instagram Social Commerce” sounds well. Nevertheless, to optimize, you have to improve the next questions:

-Title. It is right. Although it, explore alternatives.

-Abstract. It is right.

-Theoretical framework. It seems right, but check if some references can be updated.

-Methods. Methodology is improvable. The quantitative part seems right (the main limitation is the sample, focused on a unique country), but I suggest to complete the paper with another qualitative source. An example are in-deep interviews, or even a Delphi. Perhaps in-deep interviews are not possible in this moment, but expert brief interviews (a Delphi) can allow an added value, in this case increased because you try to suggest a model. Combining quantitative and qualitative results allows more light to the final result.

-Results. Results are improvable for the explained reasons. They need a qualitative support.

-Conclusion and discussion. You can adapt conclusion and discussion if you include the recommended qualitative method.

 

additional comments:

1. What is the main question addressed by the research?   The article analyses how customer behaviors in relation to purchasing organic foods via social commerce platforms.   2. What parts do you consider original or relevant for the field? What specific gap in the field does the paper address?   The research is focused on Instagram. It can be considered original, but it is necessary to specify why this social network and no other or others. This aspect is not defended. More social networks will allow a more comparative view about it.
3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published
material?   It adds the approach of the influence of social networks.   4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the
methodology? What further controls should be considered?   First of all, they have to justify why Instagram is the social network selected. Furthermore, with the final results, I recommend doing qualitative reinforcement. The more adequate is a Delphi, a posteriori, with profiles that allow light interpreting the results. 
5. Please describe how the conclusions are or are not consistent with the
evidence and arguments presented. Please also indicate if all main questions
posed were addressed and by which specific experiments.   Conclusions are consistent, but they can change after the Delphi analysis.   
6. Are the references appropriate?   Yes
7. Please include any additional comments on the tables and figures and
quality of the data.   Some Tables (2 or 5) are too long, but it is not the principal problem of the article.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It needs a detailed language review

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study investigates how the trust and behaviors of consumers toward purchasing organic foods via Instagram's social commerce platforms influence their purchasing behaviors. The study applies the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT-2) to develop a comprehensive model, and the data was collected through a quantitative survey of 410 customers in Iran.

While the study addresses an important topic, there are several ways it can be improved:

1. In the introduction, please explicitly state your main research questions and how you contribute to the body of literature on this topic.

2. There are several studies on social commerce adoption and acceptance, it is not clear to the reader what the research gap is that you are addressing in your study.

3. I suggest that you create a table of previous studies on social commerce and compare them to identify the gaps in these studies.

4. I am missing key literature on the topics:

- Rahman, F.B.A., Hanafiah, M.H., Zahari, M.S.M. and Jipiu, L.B., 2023. Social commerce adoption: a study on consumer's online purchase behaviour of perishable pastry products. British Food Journal, 125(1), pp.318-344.

- Al-Kfairy, M., Shuhaiber, A., Al-Khatib, A.W. and Alrabaee, S., 2023. Social Commerce Adoption Model Based on Usability, Perceived Risks, and Institutional-Based Trust. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

and many other.

- Methodology is very strong. thank you.

- Research limitations: please elaborate on the limitations of your study

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Requires a bit of proofreading, overall is good

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article has improved a lot. The only question to improve is in the references, because the criterion with the initials of the names changes: in some references the initials are together without space, in others with space.... The authors must repair it. For example:

Han, M.C. 

Levy, S. I S

It is necessary to amend it. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf