Customers’ Prior Knowledge in the Servitization of Traditional Handicrafts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This research contributes to the marketing of local specialty handicrafts, but the author is requested to add the following suggestions.

1. Does the preliminary architecture diagram proposed by the author in the introduction have relevant theoretical basis? Or is it just the author's own argument? Please explain it.

2. Customers who come may just be interested or curious to participate. Will it create a threshold for customers to come into contact with handicrafts if they require prior knowledge to have a better experience and satisfaction? That is to say, only people with product knowledge can go shopping and consume, otherwise they will not get satisfactory service and experience. Does this violate the concepts of product marketing and service design? Maybe the author can explain more.

3. The traditional handicraft industry should seek opportunities to collaborate with other industries... . I don’t know which result of the study led to this idea.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

1. Does the preliminary architecture diagram proposed by the author in the introduction have relevant theoretical basis? Or is it just the author's own argument? Please explain it.

• The author really appreciate that this paper was improved according to reviewer’s insightful comments.
• The research framework is original. That is, variables in the framework are original, but I construct RQs based on theoretical basis. The view point of service process (pre-, during, and post-) is a typical perspective in the field of service research. I added the explanation in lines 39-40. The logic of variable selection has been written in the section “2.2. Customers’ Prior Knowledge.”
  • The service process is mainly composed of three phases: pre-, during, and post-service [8]. (lines 39-40)

2. Customers who come may just be interested or curious to participate. Will it create a threshold for customers to come into contact with handicrafts if they require prior knowledge to have a better experience and satisfaction? That is to say, only people with product knowledge can go shopping and consume, otherwise they will not get satisfactory service and experience. Does this violate the concepts of product marketing and service design? Maybe the author can explain more.

• The author is grateful for reviewer’s careful comments. Not only people with high knowledge can go shopping and consume. The results imply that people with high knowledge is possible gain more satisfaction. This is primary massage of the present study, and furthermore, the present study identified the mechanism (factors) to improve the satisfaction (i.e., prior knowledge affects to information search of foods, which is a resource integrated with pottery, and THINK experience).
• These findings do not violate product marketing and service design. Rather, it emphasizes the importance of customer education. In other words, communication with customer in pre-services is very important, particularly in the context of servitization of traditional handicraft.
  • Therefore, providers of traditional handicrafts should enhance their communication with customers in pre-services particularly in servitization. (lines 319-321)

3. The traditional handicraft industry should seek opportunities to collaborate with other industries... . I don’t know which result of the study led to this idea.

• Thank you for useful comments. I improved the explanation of evidence. This discussion point came from the result that customers’ prior knowledge promotes their information search behavior of resources integrated with traditional handicrafts.
  • Customers’ prior knowledge promotes their information search for resources integrated with traditional handicrafts (i.e., foods) during services. Therefore, collaboration with other product industries is useful for traditional handicraft providers who are introducing servitization. (lines 303-305)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author/s

Very interesting paper. I would like to point out the following comments

- Regarding the previous studies, I see only one ref (Schmidt et al., 1996) that proposed the model that you used. What about other approaches, even more recent studies. I proposed you to include a seperate section called 'previous studies' to make more clear what is the relevant dialogue on your subject

- I proposed also to make clear the varaibles of your study research regarding the questionnaire! These variables I believe that derived from the proposed model of Schmidt et al. (1996) but this is wrong from a justified research point of view! Are there any others researchers that they used some of the same variables that you used! You have to mention them

- Regarding 'theoretical implications'!! Here you have to compare your results with other previous studies 

Author Response

Reviewer 2

1. Regarding the previous studies, I see only one ref (Schmidt et al., 1996) that proposed the model that you used. What about other approaches, even more recent studies. I proposed you to include a seperate section called 'previous studies' to make more clear what is the relevant dialogue on your subject

• The author would like to thank you for pointing out the scope for improvements and acknowledging the potential of this paper.
• Although there is many research on servitization, research targets a traditional handicraft are scarce even servitization is potentially benefit for traditional handicraft industry. Therefore, I had to make a reference from research fields of service marketing, servitization, and customer knowledge (section 2) to create the research framework. The present study is exploratory research rather than hypotheses testing type research.
• As following reviewer’s comment, I added explanation and recently reference to the framework from service marketing perspective.
  • The service process is mainly composed of three phases: pre-, during, and post-service [8]. (lines 39-40)

2. I proposed also to make clear the varaibles of your study research regarding the questionnaire! These variables I believe that derived from the proposed model of Schmidt et al. (1996) but this is wrong from a justified research point of view! Are there any others researchers that they used some of the same variables that you used! You have to mention them

• Thank you for insightful comment. The questionnaire did not derive only from Schmidt et al. (1966). In terms of customers’ prior knowledge, the present study measured subjective knowledge. I revised draft to be clearer.
  • Prior knowledge assessed the previous experience of possessing and using Kutaniyaki according to previous studies that measured product experience as customers’ subjective knowledge [26, 29]. (lines 174-176)
• Furthermore, I added explanation to research limitations.
  • Classification with objective knowledge may also be useful because the present study only investigated subjective knowledge. (lines 340-341).
• In addition, the experiential marketing used in the questionnaire has been used by other researchers widely.
  • The concept of experiential marketing has been used widely in marketing research to measure customer experience [49, 50]. (lines 181-183)

3. Regarding 'theoretical implications'!! Here you have to compare your results with other previous studies

• Thank you for useful comment. As the present study is exploratory research, it is difficult to compare the results with previous studies directly. Nevertheless, I added an explanation according to reviewer’s suggestions.
  • The result that service information enhance customer satisfaction is consistent with previous research [35]. (lines 249-250)
• The present study has discussed the results by compare previous studies.
  • This result is consistent with previous research showing that THINK experiences are more likely to lead to perceived value among service experiences [53]. (lines 259-261)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Author/s

This is not that I expected from you but it's ok

I suggest in future studies to have a more clear view about previous studies analysis

Author Response

Thank you very much for your understanding. I will update this research topic in future studies.