e-RetailTest: Scale to Assess the Attitude of Consumers towards E-Commerce in the Retail Sector

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting study and the authors have studied “e- RetailTest: Scale to Assess the Attitude of Consumers towards e-Eommerce in the Retail Sector”. The paper is generally well-written and structured. Here are several areas where I think you might do better, though:

Abstract: The results of the analysis should only be mentioned in the abstract; the exact values need not be given. The abstract's last statement, "Thus, it seeks to contribute... in Latin America," may be revised as per the above comment.

Introduction: The introduction is nicely written, but it needs to be more succinct and remove words that are unnecessary for this topic. Mention the research objective explicitly in the introduction section, as well as some novelty and contribution of this study.

Literature review: Create a great start to your literature review. More detail is needed in the literature review. The author may include portions of the introduction in the literature review. Authors mentioned reference [17,25,26,34-53]; check this.

Materials and methods: Mention the source of scale for each construct. In Page 6 author mentions gender, age and country but in Table 2, no country name is mentioned. From Table 4, remove “,” before from 956, 830, … and put “.”. Table 7 (validity test table) shows the output of the correlation of SA and P.W is 0.849, which is greater than the sqrt of AVE (0.816); this means this is not valid, check this. Here authors provide a measurement model, but the authors do not incorporate a structural model also. Incorporate a structural model also because, without a structural model, the research objectives are not fulfilled. Page 8 author mentioned, “Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was then carried out” make connections between this word with the previous.

General comments: Make a separate section for the literature review and implications.

Section 4.1 implication here I should be capital.

The conclusion needs to be concise; the authors need to discuss only the outcome of this study.

Check the spelling throughout the paper (for example, in the title “e-Eommerce” would be “E-commerce”)

The rest of the study was written well.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

Thank you very much for your informed comments, which helped us so much in improving the manuscript.  We appreciated the time you spent in doing this and tried our best to address all your comments.

We hope that this revised version of the paper reaches the expected standard, worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Topic 2.1

It is important to specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria adopted to select these specialists (in addition to the reported theoretical knowledge).

Validation tests were applied correctly, with statistical relevance to the study. However, I do not agree with the statement that the research can be extended to countries with similar behavior since its sample is mainly made up of young people between 18 and 30 years old. In Brazil, for example, many adults over 50 are still conservative and prefer to shop at a physical store in their local city.

Item 4.2 contradicts your defense that your data can be extended to other Latin American countries. Reinforcement beware of ambitious inferences. Remember that your sample is made up of young people who, in general, prefer to shop online.

Line 132 You cannot claim that a new habit has been formed because you have not measured it. You can say that there was indeed an influence of the pandemic on consumer attitudes. Limitations have been described correctly. I only reinforce the importance of aligning this with the statements made in the Results and Discussion topics.

I congratulate the authors for carrying out the work, and for their concern in evaluating a considerable number of participants that would confer reliability to the results. The validation of scales for international use is very necessary since we have few instruments available. Therefore, this work is essential to open a front in this direction.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

Thank you very much for your informed comments, which helped us so much in improving the manuscript.  We appreciated the time you spent in doing this and tried our best to address all your comments.

We hope that this revised version of the paper reaches the expected standard, worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

Best regards,

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In general, I suggest a careful re-reading to eliminate the still numerous typos. For example, in some cases e-RetaiTest Scale is written instead of e-RetailTest Scale.

From a methodological point of view, the use of a convenience sample produced a spontaneous bending towards a group of young people (77% are under 30), single (71%) and highly educated (58% ). It would be advisable to: a) better highlight the impact of this profile of the sample on the research results; b) hypothesize a further study with a stratified sample.

One of the most significant limitations of this type of survey is not distinguishing between shopper and consumer, with respect to the online purchasing process. In other words, whoever uses an online platform is often only the shopper (which would explain the strong presence of young people in the sample) who buys on behalf of a consumer who remains unknown and who does not believe he has the skills to purchase online. Therefore, some factors that the scale takes into account, for example the perceived risk, should be referred at least in part to the real consumer/decision maker and not to those who merely carry out the online purchase operation. 

It would be extremely interesting to explore this type of dynamic and the relationship between decision maker/consumer and online shopper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

Thank you very much for your informed comments, which helped us so much in improving the manuscript.  We appreciated the time you spent in doing this and tried our best to address all your comments.

We hope that this revised version of the paper reaches the expected standard, worthy of publication in this journal.

A detailed list of answers to your comments and suggestions is reported below.

Many thanks for your time.

 

Best regards,

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf