Review Reports - An Exploratory Analysis of the FAIRTRADE Certified Producer Organisations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper examines fairtrade and non-firetrade using an exploratory analysis of certified producer oranizations. The topic of the study is interesting but there are the need for improving the quality of the study.

Why readers must read your article? In the section of Introduction, the authors must assdess key theoretical contributions between prior studies and the current study. One of tips is that you can create a Table to address this issue.
Data are too old (2015). You must explain the main reasons of why this study uses 65 developing countries in 2015.
The section 4.4 focuses on frantional logistic regressions, but the authors fail to present their results. Please expain more solid approaches.

Author Response

First of all, We would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for the comments and suggestions that have certainly increased the quality of the paper. Below the reviewers can find the answers to the comments, and within the document the tracked changes made on the basis of the suggestions.

Reviewer 1:

Why readers must read your article? In the section of Introduction, the authors must assdess key theoretical contributions between prior studies and the current study. One of tips is that you can create a Table to address this issue.

We have divided the Introduction and the literature review sections to have more space for presenting the results from the literature regarding the topics addressed by our research. We did not use a table because the topics are not so many: the theme linked to the type of organisation of certified producers, the duration of the involvement of producer organisations in the Fairtrade market and - above all - the share of the revenues that the organisations derive from Fairtrade compared to other markets. Of course, should the reviewer deem it necessary to insert a table in this regard, we will do it with pleasure.

Data are too old (2015). You must explain the main reasons of why this study uses 65 developing countries in 2015.

We are aware that the data are not updated (2015). Although data is collected on an annual basis, their collection, cleaning and standardisation in a single database require a long time, which leads to a significant delay between the time of data collection and their actual availability.This was added to the document. Moreover, obtaining data and the permission to disseminate the results of the analyses required collaboration with various actors involved. However, we believe that the data are representative of the FT certified producers network.

The section 4.4 focuses on frantional logistic regressions, but the authors fail to present their results. Please expain more solid approaches.

Section 4.4 has been rewritten using a more structured approach.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is devoted to an interesting and relevant topic. The literature analysis is quite extensive and fully corresponds to the topic.

However, there is a problem of inconsistency between the topic of the article, the formulation of the tasks and the used empirical approaches. As a result, the conclusions of the work are practically irrelevant to the tasks and do not answer the main question of the work.

In the article, the authors set a goal to identify how the participation of organizations in trading through the FT system benefits them from the income point of view. The authors can't answer this question only relying on the data of an internal study. Along the way, the authors consider several related problems that manifest themselves through regression models. These are the gender aspect, the influence of the organizational size and the region. However, these results do not answer the question about the impact of Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade revenues.

It seems that the situation can be improved if they try to reformulate the title of the article and the basic hypotheses. The presented empirical results are dated 2015. The question is why only this time period? Do the authors have more relevant data at their disposal?

In addition, according to the description of the empirical study, the authors have the potential to study dynamic effects. Perhaps relative indicators, such as the growth dynamics of companies, could better demonstrate the positive (or negative) impact of companies' participation in the FT system. In addition, the growth rates can also be represented on the average for the markets, which would allow us to indirectly show how participation in the FT affects the development of firms. On the other hand, panel regression could form the basis for more reasoned conclusions regarding the tasks set by the authors.

Author Response

Reviewer 2:

The article is devoted to an interesting and relevant topic. The literature analysis is quite extensive and fully corresponds to the topic. However, there is a problem of inconsistency between the topic of the article, the formulation of the tasks and the used empirical approaches. As a result, the conclusions of the work are practically irrelevant to the tasks and do not answer the main question of the work.

Thanks for this comment and your suggestions. We have revised several parts of the document based on your suggestions, shifting the focus from the issues economic benefits assessment towards a more exploratory and descriptive approach of the dynamics within the network of Fairtrade producers and the generation of revenues.

We agree that a study of the dynamic effects would certainly be more interesting, however at the moment, we do not have the data that allow us to do this type of analysis since we only have a cross-sectional data referring to the year 2015

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This revision work has been well addressed.

Author Response

we are pleased to have fulfilled the reviewer's requests

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors made some changes to the article that improved its presentation. Unfortunately, there are still comments about the study and the main argument.
1. The abstract states that the purpose of the article is a comprehensive analysis. But it is further indicated that the authors assess the impact on income of participation in the network of fair trade organizations. What is the final option? The hypotheses of the study are not clearly formulated. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the compliance of the research plan, hypotheses and methods.
2. Despite the changes, the argumentation remains basically the same and is based on a simple presentation. The authors did not specify which assumptions are being tested. Therefore, the arguments and discussion of the conclusions do not look consistent, balanced and convincing.
3. The results of empirical studies are presented clearly and clearly. But the conclusions do not fully correspond to the questions posed.
4. The changes made by the authors do not allow us to conclude that the research results justify the conclusions.

5. The novelty of the results obtained is not justified, since the contribution to the discussion is not such a result.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
First of all, let me thank you for taking the time to review our Paper and for your valuable suggestions that have allowed us to improve its quality. We would also like to apologize for not adequately respond to your requests of the first revision. We hope that this new version will meet your expectations.

We carried out a substantial revision of the paper which consisted of rewriting the abstract, introduction and conclusions sections.
The introduction was combined with what was previously a literature review section, so it was easier to introduce the most relevant elements for our analysis right from the start. Even the conclusions have been substantially revised thanks to its revision, after reading which we realized were of little relevance compared to the analyses carried out.

We thank you in advance for your work and we hope to have adequately answered your doubts.

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have made the necessary changes. Some shortcomings cannot be corrected within the framework of this study. But they can serve as directions for further work.