The Impact of Green Marketing on Consumer Behavior in the Market of Palm Oil Products

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study is considered to have well analyzed the impact of green marketing on consumer behavior using an analysis tool called decision tree. Logically, there is no problem. Furthermore, I was able to read this paper with interest because it reflects the recent situation in which environmental problems are becoming very popular.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer!

Thank You very much for your supporting and kind words. The language have been proofread by an English translator. Several typos, syntaxes and other grammar and language errors have been corrected.

Reviewer 2 Report

Lines 20-21: "The first two hypotheses we set were approved, however the relationship proved to be weak in both cases.". Since you have not mentioned which these hypotheses are, the information that they were approved seems to be out of context. Please rewrite.

Abstract: I understand that it is convenient to present the abstract based on the manuscript's structure, however, I don't really see why there is any need to mention in the abstract the following: 

• "The second chapter introduces the research goals and the methodology." 
• "The final chapter presents the assessment of the research results and introduces our proposal." 

Lines 42-43: "...does not matter whether..."; wrong syntax. Delete "does not matter" and use only "whether".

Line 46: "in the 1960s of the 20th century"; I believe you don't have to define that the 1960s were in the 20th century.

Line 47: "environment friendliness" perhaps "environmental friendliness" would be better.

Line 56: "Vilkaite-Vaitone, Skackauskiene [13]"; I believe it is more proper to use "and" between the 2 names. 

Lines 56-57: "one of the most significant authors in the field of green marketing"; who are you referring to? You have just mentioned 3 different persons.  

Lines 56-58: The citation of the sentence "sustainability emerges as a key to green marketing" is not clear; is it according to [12][13] or according to [7]? 

Line 59: Table 1 seems out of context, as now mention has been made within the text.

Lines 90-91: "The 90 Coca-Cola established..." => delete "The"

Lines 93-94: "One of these projects aimed to clean the English rivers started in 2012 [20]." => "...aiming to clean..."

Introduction: Finishing the introduction, the aim of your study should be clear; please elaborate accordingly. As it is now, the Introduction includes only information regarding green marketing, without making clear what the present work has to do about. 

Introduction: What is the innovation of your study in relation to previous work? In other words, what is the research gap that it aims to cover?

Introduction: At the end of the Introduction, please provide a description of the structure of your manuscript.

Line 106: "...how much sacrifice is necessary to be made by the consumer". What do you mean by "sacrifice"? Is it referring to financial sacrifice, or something else? Not clear.

2. Literature Review: Since the aim of the study has not been defined in the Introduction, it is not really clear what the purpose of the Literature review is. For example, it is not clear why there is information concerning "Consumer Attitude Towards The Environment", "Consumer Groups: etc....

2.1 "Consumer Attitude Towards The Environment" seems to be a rather general topic; however, you cover it only referring to the Peattie matrix. Since you are mentioning "Consumer Attitude Towards The Environment" in general, shouldn't the literature review on the topic be more elaborate?

Lines 123-141: This whole section has no citation.

2.2. Consumer Groups: Although the "Consumer Groups" has a rather wide range, your literature review seems to be rather narrow. You present 5 specific groups of categories. What does this mean? That there is a common agreement in literature, that these are the 5 specific groups of consumers? 

Line 142: "LOHAS": Abbreviation should be defined in its first appearance.

Line 156: "[29, 30]". If these 2 citations concern all 5 bullets, it should be better to be cited on line 150: "...the consumer habits [29,30]:". Right now, it seems that they refer only to bullet #5.

Lines 157-168: Doesn't really seem as literature review material, rather as a market-related case study.

Lines 169-176: These 2 paragraphs have no citations. What does this mean? That they are your own conclusions? And if yes, based on what information are they made, since nothing relevant has been mentioned above?  

Table 2: Seems out of context, no mentioned has been made to this table and the information it provides.

2.3. Influencing Consumer Behaviour: Same comment as above, since the scope of the study has not been defined, it is not clear how to interpret the literature review provided.

2.3. Influencing Consumer Behaviour: This section should be further elaborated and additional references should be added, since the whole subsection (excluding the "Descriptive social norms" is based on only 3 references.   

Lines 272-274: "The main message of the advertisement that consumers buy from those companies, which use palm oil to produce their goods and they contribute to deforestation and the destruction of some animal habitats.". Please rephrase, the sentence seems to have a syntax issue.

Line 276: "...however..." => "although"

Lines 276-282: No citation is provided for this part. 

Line 309: "In order to conduct the primary research". What is the primary research? Still not defined. 

Line 310: "the opinion and attitude of the Slovak consumer". Opinion and attitude on what? 

Line 310: Why did you select the Slovak consumer? No relevant information has been provided: i) on why you selected the specific nationality and b) concerning the specific market (green markets in Slovakia, green marketing in Slovakia, green products in Slovakia etc....).  

Lines 310-315: "The questionnaire included 23 mainly structured (closed) questions for easier analysis, as the possible answers were provided in advance. We included selective and alternative closed questions as well. In the case of the selected closed questions, the respondents could indicate several answer options, while the alternative closed questions provided a possibility to choose from 2 options (yes-no)." Please rephrase this section. As written right now, the information is not clear. For example what does "mainly structured questions" means? And how many were the "selective and alternative closed questions", since they are not included in the count of the 23 questions (as you mention "We included selective and alternative closed questions as well". 

Lines 315-318: "The questionnaire survey targeted the purchasing habits of the customers. We wanted to obtain information who is responsible for shopping at individual households, whether the consumers check the ingredients of the product, but we also covered what are the most important factors to consider during the purchase.". Please rephrase, the sentence has some syntax issues.

Line 337: "we have attached" => "had"

Lines 347-351: How did this sampling method affect having a random sample, and a sample representative of the population?

Lines 347-353: Not really clear how you distributed and collected the questionnaires? Where did you find the respondents? 

Lines 355-363: On what basis were these hypotheses developed? These seems to be no connection to the provided literature review. 

Lines 369-371: "The Pearson chi-square test requires each cell to contain at least 5 elements. In the case of larger contingency tables, it is expected that more than 20% of the cells have to meet this condition.". Is this correct? Isn't the requirement to have more than 80% of the cells containing at least 5 elements? 

Lines 379-380: "The degree of independence also played an important role in testing of hypotheses." What was the important role of degrees of independence in hypotheses testing? Please define, to be clear why there is a need to present the formula (line 383).

Lines 385-390: Should be better mentioned in a limitations subsection in the Discussion, along with all other limitations of the study.

3.1 Demographic Characteristics: The sample doesn't seem to be representative of the population; location, gender and age seem far off the country's average. The only mention you make on this issue is that "The high ratio of young respondents is not an obstacle, as they will be the future generation of consumers.". What about location and age? And why is the sample so imbalanced? Does it have to do with the sampling method you used? What are the implications of such an imbalanced sample? In line 310 you mention that your study "targeted the opinion and attitude of the Slovak consumer"; however, how is indicated that this sample is representative of the Slovak consumer. Please address all these issues both in this section, as well as in the limitation subsection in Discussion.    

3.1. Demographic Characteristics: It would be useful to present the demographics in a Table, where you would also add a column with the country's means on all these characteristics (i.e., based country Census).

3.1. Demographic Characteristics: Why didn't you ask for the respondents' income? It is a significant factor, where referring to purchase decisions.

Lines 412-425: "It proved to be an important information whether the consumers read the description of products and check the information about product ingredients.". On what basis do you mention that it "proved to be an important information"? In the following lines, you just mention the descriptive statistics of this questions, without making clear why it can be characterized as "an important information".

Line 414: "they can give an example when they read the product description" => "they can give an example of reading the product description"

3.2. Main Results: I believe that all these results would be much better presented by providing a table. For example, in lines 426-442 you mention percentages one after the another, and it is very hard to follow.  

Lines 480-481: The syntax of the sentence should be improved.

Lines 504-505: "We asked what the maximum price they would pay for the palm oil-free product." Add "would be" at the end of the sentence. As it is not grammatically correct.

3.2. Main Results: In some cases you mention in a parenthesis after the %, the total count of the respondents (e.g. lines 426-442); in other cases you don't (e.g. lines 443-498). What is the rationale behind this?  

Lines 513-515: "There is a significant relationship between the opinion of the consumer whether he/she is buying products containing palm oil and the fact that he/she was surprised by the information, which products contain palm oil most often.“. The syntax of this sentence should be improved (see bold); also check above in your manuscript, where you have made this statement again.

Table 1: Both rows and columns have the title "Purchasing".

Table 1: It is not clear how to interpret all the information provided in Table 1. Each cell includes 4 values; the first one is the count, but what about the other 3? In addition, the Column and the Row "Total" are not clear, as in most cases the cell percentages don't add up to 100%. In any, case please explain how we should interpret all the table's values. 

Table 4: Same as above, not clear how to interpret all this information provided.

Tables 5 and 6: The existence and strength of a relationship is indicated; however, the direction of the relationship is not discussed. Is it a positive or a negative relationship? This comment also implies for the 1st and the 3rd Hypotheses: what is the direction of the relationship? 

Table 7: As above, a lot of numbers, without being clear what they represent.

3.3. Hypotheses Testing: As mentioned above, it is not clear how these hypotheses were constructed; in addition what is their relation to the provided literature review? These connection are not clear. 

3.4. Decision Tree: It is the first time you mention this decision tree. Shouldn't it have been described in the methodology section? It is not clear how it is connected to the results above, how you performed the analysis, why you performed the analysis etc... It seems out of context, as it is mentioned here for the first time. What is the methodology of performing such an analysis? Please improve this section, to make clear what you are doing, why you are doing it, how you are doing it, and how it is connected to the above analysis.

Discussion: Lines 656-691: This part seems to be repeating results of the study, with very small additions to the discussion of the issues under investigation. Please elaborate accordingly.

Lines 733-754: This whole part is just describing the methodology and findings of another study. This is totally inappropriate for a discussion section (without even making a connection to the present study's results). 

Lines 757-761: This is just a brief summary of the hypotheses results, providing no discussion on the implications of the findings. 

Discussion: The whole Discussion section seems to be a repetition of the results (descriptive and chi-squares) already presented in the Results section, with just a few connections to previous studies. There is no real discussion on the implications on of the results. In addition, the whole "Decision Tree" section results seem to have be "forgotten" in the discussion section, as no relevant discussion has been provided.

Discussion: Please discuss the policy implications of your results.

Discussion: Please provide the limitations of the study.

Having read the whole manuscript, the connection of the Literature Review section is really not clear in relation to the hypotheses, the results, the discussion... In the literature review you talk about consumer groups, LOHAS, etc... How are these subjects connected to the rest of the manuscript?

The whole document requires moderate language revision. I have mentioned several corrections needed, but it was impossible to include all of them in the review. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer!

We would like to thank the reviewer very much for the professional comments, which contributed to the quality of the paper.

Our revision version contains the following:

Abstract

We completed the two mentioned but missing hypotheses from the abstract.

The criticized parts (about the structure of the article) have been deleted.

 

Introduction

"In the 1960s of the 20th century" – have been corrected as suggested.

"Environment friendliness" have been changed to "environmental friendliness" as advised.

Changed the comma to “and” between the names of the co-authors.

We made it clear when referencing to a concrete research.

Table 1 have been deleted since as you wrote “seems out of context”. It was not necessary; you were right about that.

Deleted “The” before the name of “Coca-Cola”

We explained the research aim at the end of the chapter, wrote about the “novelty” of our study and provided a description of the structure of our manuscript.

 

Literature review

Made it clear what “sacrifice” is referring to in our case.

Redesigned the Consumer Attitude Towards the Environment and Consumer Groups chapters and added some new literature with references – it is also true for the whole “Literature Review” chapter.

We have explained the use of the “5 specific groups of consumers”.

The abbreviation "LOHAS" is now defined in its first appearance.

The placement of the citations have been corrected – in several cases.

With the part entitled by the reviewer as “market-related case study” we intended to illustrate that how the LOHAS lifestyle influenced the companies` strategies. For this we chose the case of a worldwide known soft drink manufacture.

We did not delete but have explained the “Table 2” (it was originally “Table 2”, now “Table 1” after the changes) in the text in more detail.

 

Materials and Methods

We have explained the aims of the study in more details.

Completed the “opinion and attitude of the Slovak consumers” with the part “about products with and without palm oil.”

We aimed to assess the opinion of Slovakian consumers since all of the authors are of Slovakian origin.

Basically, the online research can be just as effective as traditional methods, because the internet user population is now very large and the number of users is constantly growing.

The consumer group was reached by the snowball method.

Since this is an immature research area, we have drawn on our own research experience.

The reviewer was right about the “Chi-square rule” – we made a drafting error in the original version. We are sorry for that and we have corrected it as the following: “The Pearson chi-square test requires each cell to contain at least 5 elements. In the case of larger contingency tables, it is expected that more than 80% of the cells have to meet this condition.”

The degree of freedom is important since the chi-squared distribution is skewed. Its shape depends on the degree of freedom. The larger degree of freedom, results in a symmetric distribution.

 

Results

We have presented the demographics in a Table, where we have also added a column with the country's means on all these characteristics. We gained data from the The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (SLOVSTAT) which is the most reliable demographic source in Slovakia. It allows to access to the latest census and other statistics, regarding main economic indicators such as industry, telecommunications, foreign trade, and GDP.

Under the mentioned table (“Table 2”) we also have given explanation on why “the sample doesn't seem to be representative of the population”. The consumer group was reached by the snowball method – as mentioned above – so we had no impact on the development of the sample.

We did not ask consumers about their income since Slovaks are not open for telling the truth about such personal questions. We were afraid that such a question would deter the respondents from participation. Instead of that we used social classes. The respondents had to classify themselves. At the end we did not include it in our study since we experienced that consumers' income can influence consumption patterns, but perceptions of sustainability do not depend on income.

The ingredients and manufacturing process can provide information on the sustainability of the product.

We have added three more tables to the “Main Results” part as the reviewed asked. We hope it makes the presentation of the results clearer and better.

We have chosen to use the % version of the results only, and deleted the “total count of respondents” as it was indicated in one paragraph only. Firstly, we wanted to make the results clearer than decided to use the % form only, and it remained there due to our inattention. Now it is unified in the full paper.

Both rows and columns had the title "Purchasing" in the “Table 1” (now “Table 6” after the revisions). We have corrected the issue. We also made some changes to the table to make it more interpretable.

The Cramer V analysis does not provide information on the direction of the relationship. It just shows the strength of the relationship.

We have drawn on our own research experience and made new hypotheses since it is an immature research area.

The decision tree divides and organizes the consumer's decision mechanism in a similar way to the cross-tables. It helps you understand consumer decision-making in a graphical way. It also calculates the importance of each factor.

 

Discussion

In order to understand the results of another study we had to describe the methodology used by the authors of that research. Without that the results are not interpretable.

We have added several references to other studies and have compared the results with our results.

We have made new conclusions.

We have summarized the limitations of the research and wrote some thought on future directions and aims.

 

The language has been proofread by an English translator. Several typos, syntaxes and other grammar and language errors have been corrected.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article addresses a current topic that is relevant to companies. It is about Green Marketing, a subject that still needs to be further explored in the literature, mainly on issues related to consumer behavior. This issue is a reality, and companies need to be attentive to the needs of consumers and issues related to sustainability.

I learned a little more about the topic by reading the article. In my view, this article has the potential to be published.

I have some suggestions:

1 - Highlight the main contributions of the article, with practical, theoretical, and political implications.

2- All tables and figures must be cited in the text.

3 - Insert the main limitations of the research and suggestions for future research.

4 - Include an article conclusion section.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer!

Thank You very much for your supporting and kind words. All the tables and figures are now cited in the text. We extended the summary of the study with limitations and future aims and directions. We also compared the results with previous studies and wrote about our implications in more details at the end of the study. We have summarized the limitations of the research and wrote some thought on future directions and aims.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

The way you provided your responses, makes it very hard for me to evaluate your responses in relation to my comments. 

I can see that you have provided several detailed responses, however, there is no clear connection between each of my comments with each of your responses. Even if the responses are provided with the exact same order to the comments made, it is not easy to go each time through the 2 lists (i.e., the one with the comments and the one with the responses) to find the match between them. 

As you can understand, since I had provided almost 70 comments, it is impossible for me to match each of your responses, with each one of the comments. 

I believe that the proper way for this process would be to provide each of your responses right after each of the comments, perhaps indicating it with a different font (e.g. bold, italics, different font color). 

Having the above in mind, I was not able to evaluate this new version, in relation to my comments on the 1st version. 

 

 

 

 

  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer!

We would like to thank you again for the professional comments. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by making not quite clear and not enough detailed responses. Hereby we respond to your comments point by point.

We also made a table version, see the attachement.

Lines 20-21: "The first two hypotheses we set were approved, however the relationship proved to be weak in both cases.". Since you have not mentioned which these hypotheses are, the information that they were approved seems to be out of context. Please rewrite.

Response: We completed the two „mentioned but missing” hypotheses from the abstract.

Abstract: I understand that it is convenient to present the abstract based on the manuscript's structure, however, I don't really see why there is any need to mention in the abstract the following: 

• "The second chapter introduces the research goals and the methodology." 
• "The final chapter presents the assessment of the research results and introduces our proposal." 

Response: The criticized parts (about the structure of the article) have been deleted.

Lines 42-43: "...does not matter whether..."; wrong syntax. Delete "does not matter" and use only "whether".

Response: Corrected as you advised

Line 46: "in the 1960s of the 20th century"; I believe you don't have to define that the 1960s were in the 20th century.

Response: Corrected as you advised

Line 47: "environment friendliness" perhaps "environmental friendliness" would be better.

Response: Corrected as you advised

Line 56: "Vilkaite-Vaitone, Skackauskiene [13]"; I believe it is more proper to use "and" between the 2 names. 

Response: We changed the comma to „and” between the names of the co-authors.

Lines 56-57: "one of the most significant authors in the field of green marketing"; who are you referring to? You have just mentioned 3 different persons.

Response: We made it clear when referencing to a concrete research. In this case we changed the sentence. Lines 54-55: According to Garg-Sharma [13], Vilkaite-Vaitone and Skackauskiene [14] – the most significant authors in the field of green marketing – sustainability is a key to green marketing.

Lines 56-58: The citation of the sentence "sustainability emerges as a key to green marketing" is not clear; is it according to [12][13] or according to [7]?

Response: It is connected to the issue above. We changed the sentence. The thought is connected to [13] and [14] (the number of the citations changed as we enriched the list of used literature) as well – as these two sources had the same standpoint. On the other hand, [8] was removed.

Line 59: Table 1 seems out of context, as now mention has been made within the text.

Response: We deleted the table since it did not contain indispensable information.

Lines 90-91: "The 90 Coca-Cola established..." => delete "The"

Response: Corrected as you advised - deleted “The” before the name of “Coca-Cola”.

Lines 93-94: "One of these projects aimed to clean the English rivers started in 2012 [20]." => "...aiming to clean..."

Response: Corrected as you advised.

Introduction: Finishing the introduction, the aim of your study should be clear; please elaborate accordingly. As it is now, the Introduction includes only information regarding green marketing, without making clear what the present work has to do about.

Introduction: What is the innovation of your study in relation to previous work? In other words, what is the research gap that it aims to cover?

Introduction: At the end of the Introduction, please provide a description of the structure of your manuscript.

Response: We explained the research aim at the end of the chapter, wrote about the “novelty” of our study and provided a description of the structure of our manuscript.

Line 106: "...how much sacrifice is necessary to be made by the consumer". What do you mean by "sacrifice"? Is it referring to financial sacrifice, or something else? Not clear.

Response: Made it clear what “sacrifice” is referring to in our case. We explained it in more details. Lines 122-124: „The level of compromise shows how much sacrifice (e.g., financial, quality, comfort, etc.) is necessary to be made by the consumer in case of purchase [25-27].”

2. Literature Review: Since the aim of the study has not been defined in the Introduction, it is not really clear what the purpose of the Literature review is. For example, it is not clear why there is information concerning "Consumer Attitude Towards The Environment", "Consumer Groups: etc....

Response: We hope it is clearer now – after the changes made in the article.

2.1 "Consumer Attitude Towards The Environment" seems to be a rather general topic; however, you cover it only referring to the Peattie matrix. Since you are mentioning "Consumer Attitude Towards The Environment" in general, shouldn't the literature review on the topic be more elaborate?

Response: Redesigned the Consumer Attitude Towards the Environment and Consumer Groups chapters and added some other literature review with references

Lines 123-141: This whole section has no citation.

Response: We enriched the used literature – added new citations to this part.

2.2. Consumer Groups: Although the "Consumer Groups" has a rather wide range, your literature review seems to be rather narrow. You present 5 specific groups of categories. What does this mean? That there is a common agreement in literature, that these are the 5 specific groups of consumers? 

Response: The chapter has been redesigned as mentioned above. "Consumer Groups" is no longer a separate chapter – it is now part of the. "Consumer Attitude Towards the Environment" chapter. We explained, justified the use of the 5 specific group with other scholars, publication as the following: Lines 163-165 „According to Dahlstrom [32], the consumers fall into 5 groups according to their attitude towards the environment and the society. It can be considered as an appropriate division used by several studies [33-36].”

Line 142: "LOHAS": Abbreviation should be defined in its first appearance.

Response: According to your comment the abbreviation "LOHAS" is now defined in its first appearance.

Line 156: "[29, 30]". If these 2 citations concern all 5 bullets, it should be better to be cited on line 150: "...the consumer habits [29,30]:". Right now, it seems that they refer only to bullet #5.

Response: The placement of the citations has been corrected according to your advice above.

Lines 157-168: Doesn't really seem as literature review material, rather as a market-related case study.

Response: With this part entitled by the reviewer as “market-related case study” we intended to illustrate that how the LOHAS lifestyle influenced the companies` strategies. For this we chose the case of a worldwide known soft drink manufacture.

Lines 169-176: These 2 paragraphs have no citations. What does this mean? That they are your own conclusions? And if yes, based on what information are they made, since nothing relevant has been mentioned above?

Response: These two paragraphs (now Lines 207-214) are based on the information as the previous paragraph (Lines 196-206). We indicated some citation.

Table 2: Seems out of context, no mentioned has been made to this table and the information it provides.

Response: We did not delete but explained the “Table 2” (it was originally “Table 2”, now “Table 1” after deleting the original „Table 1” as we explained above) in the text in more detail.

2.3. Influencing Consumer Behaviour: Same comment as above, since the scope of the study has not been defined, it is not clear how to interpret the literature review provided.

Response: We explained the aims of the study in more details and made several changes in the article – as explained above.

2.3. Influencing Consumer Behaviour: This section should be further elaborated and additional references should be added, since the whole subsection (excluding the "Descriptive social norms" is based on only 3 references.

Response: We have expanded the mentioned part by new references (Lines 216-281).

Lines 272-274: "The main message of the advertisement that consumers buy from those companies, which use palm oil to produce their goods and they contribute to deforestation and the destruction of some animal habitats.". Please rephrase, the sentence seems to have a syntax issue.

Response: Rephrased as advised.

Line 276: "...however..." => "although"

Response: Corrected as you advised.

Lines 276-282: No citation is provided for this part. 

Response: We extended the citations by [7, 13, 31, 32, 71]. These are valid for the Lines 323-330.

Line 309: "In order to conduct the primary research". What is the primary research? Still not defined.

Response: We updated the introduction and made changes in theoretical part and methodology as well. We hope that the picture is clearer now for a reader.

Line 310: "the opinion and attitude of the Slovak consumer". Opinion and attitude on what?

Completed the “opinion and attitude of the Slovak consumers” with the part “about products with and without palm oil.”

Line 310: Why did you select the Slovak consumer? No relevant information has been provided: i) on why you selected the specific nationality and b) concerning the specific market (green markets in Slovakia, green marketing in Slovakia, green products in Slovakia etc....).

Response: We aimed to assess the opinion of Slovakian consumers since all of the authors are of Slovakian origin. We selected green marketing as it is an emerging trend of marketing since the environmental protection is becoming more and more important. We chose products containing palm oil since daily used products (FMCG products) contain these and consumers are not fully informed about that and the adverse consequences of the palm oil market.

Lines 310-315: "The questionnaire included 23 mainly structured (closed) questions for easier analysis, as the possible answers were provided in advance. We included selective and alternative closed questions as well. In the case of the selected closed questions, the respondents could indicate several answer options, while the alternative closed questions provided a possibility to choose from 2 options (yes-no)." Please rephrase this section. As written right now, the information is not clear. For example what does "mainly structured questions" means? And how many were the "selective and alternative closed questions", since they are not included in the count of the 23 questions (as you mention "We included selective and alternative closed questions as well". 

Response: We wrote about the types of questions in more detail as you asked. Lines 360-363: „The questionnaire included 23 questions in total. 19 were closed-ended – 2 multiple choice, 1 alternative closed (“yes” or “no” options) and 2 Likert scale questions – 3 semi-closed questions (“Other” option included) and 1 open-ended question.” We also rephrased the paragraph as advised.

Lines 315-318: "The questionnaire survey targeted the purchasing habits of the customers. We wanted to obtain information who is responsible for shopping at individual households, whether the consumers check the ingredients of the product, but we also covered what are the most important factors to consider during the purchase.". Please rephrase, the sentence has some syntax issues.

Response: Corrected as you advised.

Line 337: "we have attached" => "had"

Response: Corrected as you advised.

Lines 347-351: How did this sampling method affect having a random sample, and a sample representative of the population?

Response: Basically, the online research can be just as effective as traditional methods, because the internet user population is now very large, and the number of users is constantly growing. We indicated that in the article too (Lines 398-400).

Lines 347-353: Not really clear how you distributed and collected the questionnaires? Where did you find the respondents? 

Response: The consumer group was reached by the snowball method (Updated – Line 397).

Lines 355-363: On what basis were these hypotheses developed? These seems to be no connection to the provided literature review. 

Response: We have drawn on our own research experience and made new hypotheses since it is an immature research area. We highlighted it in the article too (Lines 405-406). „H3 was formulated based on the results of Bryła [78] who found that the female respondents read the product descriptions more frequently, but it is less significant” (Lines 416-417).

Lines 369-371: "The Pearson chi-square test requires each cell to contain at least 5 elements. In the case of larger contingency tables, it is expected that more than 20% of the cells have to meet this condition.". Is this correct? Isn't the requirement to have more than 80% of the cells containing at least 5 elements? 

Response: The reviewer was right about the “Chi-square rule” – we made a drafting error in the original version. We are sorry for that and we have corrected it as the following: “The Pearson chi-square test requires each cell to contain at least 5 elements. In the case of larger contingency tables, it is expected that more than 80% of the cells have to meet this condition.” (Lines 423-425).

Lines 379-380: "The degree of independence also played an important role in testing of hypotheses." What was the important role of degrees of independence in hypotheses testing? Please define, to be clear why there is a need to present the formula (line 383).

Response: The degree of freedom is important since the chi-squared distribution is skewed. Its shape depends on the degree of freedom. The larger degree of freedom, results in a symmetric distribution.

Lines 385-390: Should be better mentioned in a limitations subsection in the Discussion, along with all other limitations of the study.

Response: We did it as you advised. Deleted the limitations from the methodology part and mentioned (also extended) in the „Discussion” part (Lines 914-925).

3.1 Demographic Characteristics: The sample doesn't seem to be representative of the population; location, gender and age seem far off the country's average. The only mention you make on this issue is that "The high ratio of young respondents is not an obstacle, as they will be the future generation of consumers.". What about location and age? And why is the sample so imbalanced? Does it have to do with the sampling method you used? What are the implications of such an imbalanced sample? In line 310 you mention that your study "targeted the opinion and attitude of the Slovak consumer"; however, how is indicated that this sample is representative of the Slovak consumer. Please address all these issues both in this section, as well as in the limitation subsection in Discussion.    

Response: Under the mentioned table (“Table 2”) we also have given explanation on why “the sample doesn't seem to be representative of the population”. The consumer group was reached by the snowball method – as mentioned above – so we had no impact on the development of the sample (Lines 470-472). Limiting factor is the lack of representativeness. The exact market position and number of consumers is not known, so we could not rely on this. We also mentioned the issue in the limitations in the „Discussion” (Lines 914-925).

3.1. Demographic Characteristics: It would be useful to present the demographics in a Table, where you would also add a column with the country's means on all these characteristics (i.e., based country Census).

Response: We have presented the demographics in the Table 2 (Line 467), where we have also added a column with the country's means on all these characteristics. We gained data from the The Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic (SLOVSTAT) [79] which is the most reliable demographic source in Slovakia. It allows to access to the latest census and other statistics, regarding main economic indicators such as industry, telecommunications, foreign trade, and GDP.

3.1. Demographic Characteristics: Why didn't you ask for the respondents' income? It is a significant factor, where referring to purchase decisions.

Response: We did not ask consumers directly about their income since Slovaks are not open for telling the truth about such personal questions. We were afraid that such a question would deter the respondents from participation. Instead of that we used social classes. The respondents had to classify themselves. At the end we did not include it in our study since we experienced that consumers' income can influence consumption patterns, but perceptions of sustainability do not depend on income.

Lines 412-425: "It proved to be an important information whether the consumers read the description of products and check the information about product ingredients.". On what basis do you mention that it "proved to be an important information"? In the following lines, you just mention the descriptive statistics of this questions, without making clear why it can be characterized as "an important information".

Response: The ingredients and manufacturing process can provide information on the sustainability of the product.

Line 414: "they can give an example when they read the product description" => "they can give an example of reading the product description"

Response: Corrected as you advised.

3.2. Main Results: I believe that all these results would be much better presented by providing a table. For example, in lines 426-442 you mention percentages one after the another, and it is very hard to follow.  

Response: We have added three more tables to the “Main Results” part as the reviewed asked. We hope it makes the presentation of the results clearer and better.

Lines 480-481: The syntax of the sentence should be improved.

Response: Improved as you advised.

Lines 504-505: "We asked what the maximum price they would pay for the palm oil-free product." Add "would be" at the end of the sentence. As it is not grammatically correct.

Response: Corrected as you advised.

3.2. Main Results: In some cases you mention in a parenthesis after the %, the total count of the respondents (e.g. lines 426-442); in other cases you don't (e.g. lines 443-498). What is the rationale behind this?  

Response: We have chosen to use the % version of the results only, and deleted the “total count of respondents” as it was indicated in one paragraph only. Firstly, we wanted to make the results clearer than decided to use the % form only, and it remained there due to our inattention. Now it is unified in the full paper.

Lines 513-515: "There is a significant relationship between the opinion of the consumer whether he/she is buying products containing palm oil and the fact that he/she was surprised by the information, which products contain palm oil most often.“. The syntax of this sentence should be improved (see bold); also check above in your manuscript, where you have made this statement again.

Response: Corrected (in several cases) as you advised

Table 1: Both rows and columns have the title "Purchasing".

Response: Both rows and columns had the title "Purchasing" in the “Table 1” (now “Table 6” after the revisions). We have corrected the issue. We also made some changes to the table to make it more interpretable.

Table 1: It is not clear how to interpret all the information provided in Table 1. Each cell includes 4 values; the first one is the count, but what about the other 3? In addition, the Column and the Row "Total" are not clear, as in most cases the cell percentages don't add up to 100%. In any, case please explain how we should interpret all the table's values. 

Table 4: Same as above, not clear how to interpret all this information provided.

Table 7: As above, a lot of numbers, without being clear what they represent.

Response: We need this tables to interpret the experienced values (distribution). We made changes to the tables. We hope this made it clearer. The percentages are expressed in connection with two variables (dependent and independent as well) in every cases.

Tables 5 and 6: The existence and strength of a relationship is indicated; however, the direction of the relationship is not discussed. Is it a positive or a negative relationship? This comment also implies for the 1st and the 3rd Hypotheses: what is the direction of the relationship? 

Response: Cramer V and the used statistical analysis does not provide information on the direction of the relationship. These methods only show the strength of the relationship.

3.3. Hypotheses Testing: As mentioned above, it is not clear how these hypotheses were constructed; in addition what is their relation to the provided literature review? These connection are not clear. 

Response: As mentioned above we have drawn on our own research experience and made new hypotheses since it is an immature research area. On the other hand „H3 was formulated based on the results of Bryła [78] who found that the female respondents read the product descriptions more frequently, but it is less significant” (Lines 416-417).

3.4. Decision Tree: It is the first time you mention this decision tree. Shouldn't it have been described in the methodology section? It is not clear how it is connected to the results above, how you performed the analysis, why you performed the analysis etc... It seems out of context, as it is mentioned here for the first time. What is the methodology of performing such an analysis? Please improve this section, to make clear what you are doing, why you are doing it, how you are doing it, and how it is connected to the above analysis.

Response: The decision tree divides and organizes the consumer's decision mechanism in a similar way to the cross-tables. It helps to understand consumer decision-making in a graphical way. It also calculates the importance of each factor.

Lines 733-754: This whole part is just describing the methodology and findings of another study. This is totally inappropriate for a discussion section (without even making a connection to the present study's results). 

Response: In order to understand the results of another study we had to describe the methodology used by the authors of that research. Without that the results are not interpretable.

Lines 757-761: This is just a brief summary of the hypotheses results, providing no discussion on the implications of the findings. 

Discussion: Please discuss the policy implications of your results.

Having read the whole manuscript, the connection of the Literature Review section is really not clear in relation to the hypotheses, the results, the discussion... In the literature review you talk about consumer groups, LOHAS, etc... How are these subjects connected to the rest of the manuscript?

Discussion: Lines 656-691: This part seems to be repeating results of the study, with very small additions to the discussion of the issues under investigation. Please elaborate accordingly.

Response: We wanted to summarize the results briefly to make a „light” interpretable summary for this long article. We extended the discussion part and compared our results with other scholars' results as you advised.

Discussion: The whole Discussion section seems to be a repetition of the results (descriptive and chi-squares) already presented in the Results section, with just a few connections to previous studies. There is no real discussion on the implications on of the results. In addition, the whole "Decision Tree" section results seem to have be "forgotten" in the discussion section, as no relevant discussion has been provided.

Response: Same as above and we summarized the results of the decision tree analysis as follows: „The decision tree analysis helps to understand the consumer decision and the logical structure of decision-making. The importance of decision-making is supported by statistical indicators (Figure 3-4)” We completed the „Discussion” with information about the decision tree.

 

Discussion: Please provide the limitations of the study.

Response: We updated the „Discussion” with the limitations of our study (Lines 914-925) and wrote some thought on future directions and aims (Lines 926-934).

The whole document requires moderate language revision. I have mentioned several corrections needed, but it was impossible to include all of them in the review. 

Response: The language has been proofread by an English translator. Several typos, syntaxes and other grammar and language errors have been corrected.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for providing this detailed response. By doing so, it was completely clear on how you addressed each of my comments. 

As I can see, you have properly addressed almost all of my comments. Hence, I have only 2 suggestions to make, in relation to the updated version that you provided. If these comments are adequately addressed, everything will be fine from my side.  

 

A. I had provided the following comments in my initial review: "Why did you select the Slovak consumer? No relevant information
has been provided: i) on why you selected the specific nationality and b)
concerning the specific market (green markets in Slovakia, green marketing in Slovakia, green products in Slovakia etc....).".

The response to these comments is that you added the sentence "We aimed to assess the opinion of Slovakian consumers since all of the authors are of Slovakian origin." (Lines 359-360). In addition, in your response letter you mention that "We selected green marketing as it is an emerging trend of marketing since the environmental protection is becoming more and more important. We chose products containing palm oil since daily used products (FMCG products) contain these and consumers are not fully informed about that and the adverse consequences of the palm oil market.".

I have 2 comments concerning this: 

a) the explanation that you studied the Slovakian consumers, because you are all from Slovakia doesn't seem completely adequate and convincing on a scientific basis. It would be great if you could provide a different reason on selecting the specific country (e.g. specific characteristics of the consumers, or something like that).    

b) I believe that it would be useful to add in your manuscript the response that you provided concerning the second issue (i.e., the text ""We selected green marketing as it is an emerging trend of marketing since the environmental protection is becoming more and more important. We chose products containing palm oil since daily used products (FMCG products) contain these and consumers are not fully informed about that and the adverse consequences of the palm oil market."). As I can see, it has not been included in the manuscript (please excuse me, if it has been added and I did not see it). 

 

B. Lines 398-400: "Basically, the online research can be just as effective as traditional methods, because the internet user population is now very large, and the number of users is constantly growing." Please provide citation for this statement.

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you for your comments again. It helped us to improve the article.

 

Our answer to your last comments:

A)

a) We have deleted the previous explanation and provided a different explanation about information of consumer behvior of Slovak people. We also provided citations for this part [29, 76]. 

b) Again thank you for your comment, we have inserted the mentioned text - which was the part of the response but was missing from the article.

 

B)

For this part we also provided some sources [79-81] in this latest version.