Study on the Characteristics of Fashion Leaders in College Clubs' Fashion Networks

• Published in: International journal of costume and fashion Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 1 - 15
• Main Authors: Yun, So Jung, Jung, Hye In, Choo, Ho Jung, Jeong, So Won
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: innovator; social network; centrality; fashion leader
• ISSN: 2233-9051; 2288-7490

Fashion leadership is divided into visual influence, linguistic influence, and dual leadership. We refer to people exercising such influential power as fashion innovators, fashion opinion leaders, and fashion double leaders, respectively. Scholars and marketers have raised continuous questions on this issue: who are these fashion leaders and what characteristics do they have? In this study, social network analysis is applied to grasp the existence of three types of fashion leaders in college clubs, examine their positions in fashion process networks and investigate their individual and social characteristics. For this study, three college clubs were recruited through convenience sampling and surveyed online. Peer nomination questions for structuring fashion process networks and self-evaluation questions for measuring personal characteristics are included. Two fashion networks, an opinion leadership network and an innovativeness network, embrace four to six leaders and illustrate similar structure patterns in the three groups, which indicates that dual leaders enjoyed the lion's share in college clubs. The number of fashion innovators tends to be fewer compared to that of fashion opinion leaders, and we infer that peer relationship appears to intervene with fashion opinion leadership. Other personal characteristics supporting results from previous studies are also confirmed in this study.