PONE-D-21-15727

A label indicating an old year of establishment improves evaluations of restaurants and shops serving traditional foods

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Maezawa,

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PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

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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

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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 paper entitled "A label indicating an old year of establishment improves evaluations of restaurants and shops serving traditional foods" describes a research that aims to evaluate the effect of exposure to past-focused labels (i.e., year of establishment) on attitudes and intention to visit restaurants and shops serving traditional foods in Japan. On the whole, the paper and the experiments presented therein are interesting and methodologically detailed. I report my specific suggestions to improve the paper below.

Introduction

In several psychological theories and models (e.g., Theory of Planned Behaviour) the intention to take action, like visiting a restaurant, is not on the same level of attitudes. In socio-cognitive models of behavioural change attitudes predict intentions which in turn predict behaviours. The Authors could refer specifically to these theoretical aspects in the introduction.

Page 6. Lines 101-103. In line with the above, the Authors should reformulate the sentence presenting the three considered dependent variables with a brief theoretical explanation.

Minor comment

Page 3. Lines 55-58. “Specifically, displaying an old year of establishment improves qualitative aspects of products more positively than other impressions that the time-related labels do not symbolize”. This sentence is not very clear. Please, reformulate.

Page 5. Line 90. Just a typo: there is both the definite and the indefinite article.

Experiment 1

Page 9. Lines 157-159. Following what I suggested in the previous comment, I would write something like so: “… participants indicated their attitudes toward the restaurant (expected taste and product quality) and their intention to visit on a seven-point scale…”. The authors should better describe how they measured attitudes and all the other variables used in the experiment (for the other experiments as well).

Page 9. Line 162. The Authors should state which software was used for statistical analysis (for the other experiments as well).

Page 9. Line 165. I wonder why for the first experiment there are two different sections for results and discussion while for the other experiments results and discussion are presented together. If there is no specific reason for that, please, just for the sake of clarity, choose one way or the other.

The article presents 5 experiments, described in detail. To facilitate the reader,

my advice is to create a summary table of the 5 experiments (something similar to the table below)

Experiment Subjects Experimental Conditions Measures Analyses Summary of results

1

2

3

4

5

General Discussion

Pages 27-32. Following the theoretical differences between attitudes and intentions, please correct all the sentences in which visit intention is mentioned as an attitude.

Page 30. Lines 543-546. This part about the “why” and the “how” is not very clear. Please, be more specific.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is interesting and adds useful information to the literature. The five experiments carried out are well explained, and the writing (according to my expertise) is formal and fluent. The results and conclusions are interesting.

However, I would recommend adding some elements

1) Immediately after the introduction, you could insert a short section in which you elaborate on the theoretical basis on which the study was based (you could elaborate on the consumer theories that gave you the inspiration to develop the study, the type of experiments or the context in which the study is developed and you could emphasise its originality).

2) In the final part of the conclusions you could include the limitations of the study (e.g. is it a convenience sample? is it large enough and heterogeneous enough? does it analyse a large area of Japan?) and the implications of the results (theoretical, political and managerial implications).

Finally, I think that in line 48 the reference is missing (after the word "product"), and in line 90 you should delete one of the articles between "the" and "a".

Points 1 and 2 are suggestions, but I think they can add value to your study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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A label indicating an old year of establishment improves evaluations of restaurants and shops serving traditional foods

PONE-D-21-15727R1

Dear Dr. Maezawa,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Luigi Cembalo, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. 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 authors replied to all comments and improved the article (in particular they better defined the theoretical aspects, clarifying the difference between attitude and behavior)

Reviewer #2: I re-read the paper and saw that the authors have implemented all the corrections previously suggested by the various reviewers. The implementations were comprehensive and filled the existing gaps. The topic is interesting and now all the sections are well discussed and properly explored. I think the paper can be considered completed.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No