The Influence of a Student-Led Advertising Agency Service-Learning Project on SMME Client Satisfaction: An Expectancy–Disconfirmation Paradigm

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The issues discussed by the authors of the article are important, topical and fill the research gap due to the little-known research area.

The article precisely defines the purpose and scope of the planned research.

The methodology was developed, and appropriate methods and research tools were selected and applied.

The research results were presented in an interesting way and analyzed.

The presented results are characterized by scientific independence, conducive to solving key problems, presenting views and formulating conclusions. They contain practical values resulting from the conducted empirical research and the published recommendations.

The article is very interesting, it should be published without any changes.

Author Response

Thank you so much for the positive feedback.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper offers interesting insights into the perceived satisfaction of South African SMME-s with student led advertising agencies. The empirical setting is rich and described in detail. However, there is a lack of scientific rigor when it comes to research data collection and analysis. The hypothesis development is to basic, and the findings of the paper are expected. The conducted analysis is too basic for a scientific paper. The authors should try to rethink the theoretical framing of the paper, try to find a gap in the existing literature instead of replicating prior research and use more advanced scientific research methods (descriptive statistics is not enough). 

Author Response

Thank you so much for your constructive feedback that has further enhanced the academic rigour and standing of the paper. We agree that the hypotheses seem basic and the answers appear to be somewhat predictable, yet these still need to be proven and sometimes the unexpected happens. And yet, it is my experience (after reading many thousands of academic journal articles and conducting reviews for over 240 accredited journal articles) that the outcomes of a majority of hypotheses are usually foreseeable in that one generally has a very good idea of the answers before one reads the results/findings sections. However, as you mentioned in your comments and suggestions, it is imperative is that the hypotheses are based on clear research gaps and scientifically methods are used to verify the outcomes of the hypotheses. Hence, we have further emphasised and identified new the research gaps that show that this paper does that not replicate prior research, and makes a definitive original contribution that should be well received by the academic community and encourage further inquiry in this underexplored topic gap (refer to the track changes on pages 2 and 3 of the manuscript). There is not much research on SLAAs and so we believe that we have found most of the available journal articles on this topic, which show that our focus on the client perceptive and their satisfaction with the services rendered by SLAAs to achieve business performance goals is unique (as mentioned above, please refer to the track changes on pages 2 and 3 of the manuscript). Additionally, we have strengthened the statistical/scientific methods and analysis via the implementation of a linear variance ratio model technique to statistically verify the hypothesis outcomes. Please refer to the track changes on pages 8 – 10.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your response and the changes you made to the paper. I believe that in its present form it can be published.