There are three major groups identified with fashion market. segment. The fashion leaders, the fashion followers and fashion laggers (Greenwood and Murphy,1990 )
1) Fashion Leaders: The fashion leaders presents innovators and early adopters and,as such they compromise approximately 16 percent of the total fashion marker segment.
The following are the characteristics of fashion leaders;
I) Fashion leaders are experimental and venturesome. They desire distinctiveness in fashion. They seek new colours,new styles and new fabrics. They adopt new ideas readily and influence other consumers to do so. They are socially involved,and people are usually active in economic affairs.
II) Fashion leaders have an intense interest in fashion news. They reach out magazines as vogue. Glamour and fashion sections of newspapers ,they gather fashion news as they travel to fashion centers both at home and abroad.
III) Most fashion leaders have developed a cosmopolitan approach to life and search out opportunities to spread the fashion word about seasonal and future trends.
IV) Fashion leader often serve as personal fashion consultants for friends, peers, or even professional groups. They judge beauty. Contests, designed contests,etc. They are often called upon to model and sometimes commentate for fashion shows or programms
V) Fashion leaders often seen compelled to deviate from and to show dissatisfaction with traditional ways. The exotic and the dramatic often appeal to them. They are initiated by others because of their social position or status.
VI) Fashion leaders may be gifted and unusual people. They may have won some distinction in the community,the state,or perhaps with a professional group of national influence.
It is obvious to marketers that fashion leaders are effective change agents in the community and in the fashion world. If it were not for this kind of fashion leadership, the fashion industries might come to an abrupt halt. The fashion creators (designers and couture houses) owe their livelihood to this group. The textile and apparel industries cunt heavily on it to stimulate acceptance of fashion trends. The retailer would find it difficult to develop a consumer market without fashion leaders. Fashion leaders wear distinctive fashion apparel and quality in design and fabric. The fashion stores couture houses, boutiques specialty stores,and departments store,are especially dependent not on consumers with these characteristics.
2) Fashion Followers: Fashion followers might be referred to as both early and late majority, and in terms of these two market groups they represent approximately 68 percent of the total fashion market segment, as indicated in the figure below. With the fashion cycle, the followers are predominantly associated with the acceptance stages.
The following are the characteristics of fashion followers:
I) Fashion followers are satisfied to emulate others after they become aware of fashion trends. They they may give a great deal of thought to fashion adoption decisions.
II) Fashion followers try to stay in the middle of the fashion road. They are neither the first nor the last group to adopt fashion.
III) Fashion followers approach new fashion ideas cautiously and observe others before they take fashion actions. They are influenced by the opinions of others and respond to the pressure of peers with whom they are involved socially.
IV) Fashion followers are willingly led by the fashion leadership of their community and by local retailers of fashion, although they may not frequent the fashion stores.
V) Fashion followers want for the majority to adopt fashion. When they do adopt a fashion, they influence their peers to do likewise.
VI) Fashion followed lead a casual way of life and want easy to wear, comfortable clothes. They seek out the look of fashion but not the extremes.
VII) Fashion followers like fashion that are adapted simplified and homogenized,yet express good taste.
VIII) Fashion followers want the look of affluence within the limited of their life styles and their pockets, they are careful not to offend their friends by out dressing them. The most important factors that influence their selection of fashion price, colour, and material; of lees importance are brands,style details,and other features.
Fashion followers are not change agents in the community because they have little influence on their peers. They suffer agonies for looking out of place and are likely to consult their friend about what they are going to wear or put on for a particular function. However, the fashion industries are completely dependent on these followers of fashion. They make possible mass production in the textile and apparel industries and the retailer could not exist in the market without them. Fashion followers buy accepted style in moderate to low price ranges, usually regular price line merchandise, but pick bargains when they find them. The fashion followers encourage the entry of that discounter into the retail field.
3) Fashion Laggers: The fashion laggers account for approximately 16 percent of the fashion market, as indicated in the figure below. The lagger is always among the last to accept a fashion. Usually, this happens when the fashion is declining in popularity and sometimes when it is at the point of obsolescence.
The following are the characteristics of the laggers.
I) Fashion lagers are never anxious to emulate unless it has become economically advantageous or necessary. They adopt fashion ideas last.
II) Fashion laggers,are traditionally minded. Enjoying past fashion,they are averse to change.
III) Fashion laggers,being somewhat isolationist, usually interact with other consumers who share their views. They may feel moral indignation at new styles, finding immodest,extravagant and so on.
IV) Fashion laggers, particularly those of advanced age may reject fashion completely or may accept it out of necessity. They sometimes influence others,for example,in insisting that boys not be permitted to wear long hair at school or girls not allowed to wear trousers.
V) Fashion laggers search for low priced fashion goods, discount merchandise,and fashion that are going out of season or are no longer wanted by other consumers.
VI) Fashion laggers definitely do not respond, except unfavourably,to change agents. No one in the fashion industries at any level textile and apparel or retail actually thinks of them as a preferred selling target. Nevertheless, the laggers are 16 percent of the fashion market segment,and absorb a lot of leftovers at markdowns, clearances,and closeouts.
