Fashion Opinion Leadership and Media Exposure among College Women in India

Abstract

The concept of fashion leadership among college women in India was examined by assessing the attention given to media exposure (fashion information sources) of identified opinion leaders and fashion nonleaders. A survey design with a pre tested questionnaire was used to conduct the research. The final sample con sisted of 509 college women from four universities in northwestern India. Anal ysis of variance and chi square analysis were used to test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that fashion opinion leaders used significantly more sources of fashion information and more often than nonleaders (p < 0.05 to p < 0.01). Fashion magazines were a significantly discriminating fashion information source for the two groups during the awareness, comprehension, and legitimation stages of fashion adoption (p < 0.01). Although most of the findings were consis tent with Western literature regarding the fashion adoption process, the role of parents and family members in legitimating the fashion choices of the respon dents did reflect a cultural difference.