Read TEXT A. Diffusion of Innovations in Clothes Design

New styles are offered each season. There are five characteristics the presence of which help to distribute innovations in designing clothes:

1. Superiority – innovations in clothes design should bring an advantage and new clothes should be better than previous alternatives in function, cost, social prestige, or more satisfying aesthetics.

2. Compatibility - is the degree to which an innovation is consistent with the existing norms and values of the potential customers. An innovation is less likely to be adopted if it requires much change.

3. Complexity - indicates how difficult it is to learn about and understand the innovation. An innovation has a greater chance of acceptance if easily learned and experienced.

4. Trialability - is the extent to which an innovation may be tested with a limited commitment, that is, easily and inexpensively tried without too much risk.

5. Observability – is the possibility for an innovation to be easily seen and communicated to others.

The fashion adoption process results from individuals making a decision to purchase and wear a new fashion. This process involves five basic stages: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. The individual becomes aware of the fashion, takes an interest in it, and evaluates it as having some relative advantage that could range from a new fabric technology to simply being consistent with self concept or what one’s friends are wearing.

If the individual evaluates the fashion positively, the process proceeds to trial and adoption. The study of the pattern of consumers’ adoption of a fashion is often represented by a bell-shaped curve. The life cycle of a specific fashion represented graphically indicates duration, rate of adoption, and level of acceptance. The graph depicts the rate and time involved in the diffusion process, with the horizontal axis indicating the time and the vertical axis indicating the number of adopters or users.

Such graphically portrayed data can be used to calculate the level of acceptance for a fashion. For example, the curve for a fashion that is rapidly adopted but also rapidly declines will show early growth and quick recession. The curve resulting from plotting the data in this way leads to characteristic patterns of fashion adoption, applicable for fads or classics. The graph is also useful to identify type of consumer in terms of when each adopts a fashion within its life cycle.

The consumer who adopts the fashion at the beginning of the curve is an innovator or opinion leader; at the peak, a mass-market consumer; after the peak, a laggard or isolate.

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