PONE-D-21-08998

The Role of Customer Experience in the Effect of Online Flow State on Customer Loyalty

PLOS ONE

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Dejan Dragan, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works.

- https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBM-10-2014-0139

- https://coek.info/pdf-the-impact-of-e-service-quality-and-customer-satisfaction-on-customer-behavior-i.html

- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.07.010

- http://www.jecr.org/sites/default/files/16_1_p04.pdf

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4. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 3 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

Additional Editor Comments:

The comments of the reviewers are diverse, from "minor revision" all the way to rejection of the paper. I suggest the authors to strictly follow all the reviewers' comments. AE DD

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Partly

Reviewer #4: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript was presented in an understandable fashion and written in standard English. It is well structured technically. The purposeful division of the material is to make it easier for the reader to understand the terms and easily find the issues of interest. The advantage of the article is the order of the content - the principle "from general to specific" was used here. The research hypotheses are well formulated and the findings provide a basis for answering them. Also noteworthy is the description of the research - clear and logical. It is evident that the authors understand the subject, pose the right questions and are able to answer them. The statistical analysis has been performed appropriately: quantitative data were collected by means of the questionnaire designed in a five-point Likert scale. Firstly, confirmatory faction analyses and reliability analysis were conducted to determine the validity and reliability of the scale. SEM as a multi variable statistical technique was employed to test the hypotheses. This technique was used to understand the indirect and direct effects in the theoretical model and to decrease measurement errors. The analyses were performed with SPSS and AMOS statistics programs. The authors also provided the necessary data on which the manuscript's conclusions are based. It is also worth noting the extensive literature that the authors used as a basis for preparing the article. The authors concluded their argument with a discussion and a well-designed conclusion. To sum up, this study makes a significant contribution to the literature by highlighting this relationship in online context in e-commerce environment. In addition to the theoretical layer, the article can provide application value for managers. The results indicate that investment to provide consumers with a seamless experience that makes them feel in the flow not only helps the brands have their customers entertained, but this seamless experience does also help improve brand loyalty and customer satisfaction in the long run.

Reviewer #2: The topic is interesting, however, I am sorry to say that I found little merit in this paper. The writing of this paper is quite superficial, and the proposed theory (flow theory) is not well-elaborated. In the introduction, the authors do not provide convincing arguments regarding the significance of this study, and they made insufficient effort to explain the rational of this study. In the literature section, the writing is quite descriptive and lacks the connection with the context of this study (section 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.2). In addition, the selected literatures are outdated, there are definitely some more recent studies on this topic. The data analysis seems reasonable, however, I don’t think these findings can bring much new knowledge to the field of e-commerce.

Reviewer #3: We think that article takes into consideration an interesting topic, that could have a special importance nowadays taking account of the profound transformations of consumption models under the pressure of COVID-19 pandemia. Online consumption becomes more and more present for larger mass of consumers and all the variables that can describe this phenomena deserves to be investigated as deeply as possible.

In order to achieve a proper level required for publication we strongly encouraged authors to take account off the following remarks/ requests:

1. Authors have to complete a supplementary review on English language in order to eliminate some minor typing errors. For example at line 57....”He brands now have......it should be: ..”The brand now have....

Also in line 187...” can build commitment in terms of”.....

Line 319, please correct the error:....”Firstly, confirmatory faction analyses”....

and so on...

2. The sample was reached using online communication, being targeted students, but authors should specify from what universities? Are there from a single city like Istanbul or are from different universities across Turkey?

Also it is advisable to present the structure of the sample (age, income etc - other descriptive variables used). In order to have a proper description of the sample authors can find a model within the following article: https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/mmcks-2020-0031, at page 541.

3. Who is the sample representative of? students in general? Students only from the capital Istanbul?

4. As regarding the model, in order to have a proper explained methodology it is advisable to take into consideration more indicators / statistical tests (for example Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test etc). Authors can find a proper analysis and presentation for a similar model within the following article: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9780/pdf at page 8. The example also indicates the statistical values which are relevant for hypothesis validation.

5. Where does the information on value 3 related to “χ2 / DF” come from? See lines 351-352. Why are these indicators (referring to IFC, IFI, RMSEA) different at line 353 from the values at line 403 (and below lines 410-411)? What exactly does the note on line 403 refer to? Where should the note be placed? Under figure 2? The authors need to explain this passage more clearly.

6. Table 2 must be redone as a design - columns made wider to allow the text to be framed on a single line - the current form denotes negligence in terms of appearance for the finished version of the article.

Given that the Cronbach-Alpha values are not above 9 (which would have meant the immediate validation of the model), the table must be completed with the values of other coefficients (see the model for the article indicated above) that explicitly show this thing. What are the explicit values for p -value (Sig) for each of the 4 variables considered separately.

7. Figure 2, the one referring to the coefficients of the model, needs to be redone, in order to be more visible all the details of the figure - possibly it is recommended to import from SPSS or AMOS.

8. The model needs to be explained more clearly. What exactly do the notations in the model mean and what are the values for each item that are behind the four variables of the model?

9. The bibliography is old. Articles from the last 5 years should be considered mainly

10. To verify that the citations are unitary and fit into the policy of the journal.

To correct errors related to magazine names, for example line 550 - 559, all magazine names must be entered with

large initials, in a unitary way.

Avoid lack of rigor in this regard - for example - lines 645, 647, 648, 707, 754 (pages, volume, etc.) The references are a very important part of the article, being a subject for article rejection in many occasions.

Reviewer #4: I congrats the authors for the present study and I wish that the suggestions presented here might allow the authors to show the manuscritpt's full potential in the next opportunity.

Some suggestions:

1. Submit the paper to a English proofreading review.. Ex: Line 57 - "he brands..""

2. Introduction: a) The central objective of the paper is not clear stated in the introduction; b) the second paragraph seems to be overlapped by the third which is more well based on citation. Therefore, the introduction lacks of contextual facts to sustain the problem that the paper proposes to tackle. The authors assert that online flow is a " popular concept studied in various contexts in the literature", but it's not sufficiently proven the reasoning in the introduction neither in the literature review.

3. Conceptual background: a) I suggest that the mention of the usage of SEM method should be made at the methodology section, b) also, the theoretical model figure should presented in the beginning of section 3. C) in this section I suggest the authors to present a Table 1 summarizing prior studies regarding online flow studies organized by some criteria such as constructs and casual relations tested, methods, researched public, country, main findings. The final line of the table should be your paper.

4. research methods. A) I suggest to include the questionnaire afirmations in table 1. B) inform whether a pre teste were carried out; c) clarify if the questionnaire was apllied in English or Turkish language;

4) Discussion – the authors affirms twice “study makes a significant contribution to the literature” (lines 442 and 465) but these affirmation lacks of arguments based on prior reviewed literature.

5) Conclusion – The covid19 scenario was brough to the discussion in conclusion. Why was not discussed either in the introduction? I suggest also to enhance the managerial contributions in a separate subsection of the conclusion and also add “research limitation and future studies”.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Anna Dziadkiewicz

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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The Role of Customer Experience in the Effect of Online Flow State on Customer Loyalty

PONE-D-21-08998R1

Dear Authors,

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Kind regards,

Dejan Dragan, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

All reviews and comments have been appropriately considered. Accordingly, I recommend the acceptance of the paper. AE DD.

Reviewers' comments: