article "College students’ frequency of use of information sources by fashion leadership and style of information processing" (35th)

Limitation of the study includes the acceptance of marginally significant results in two instances: fashion leadership—television ads (.07) and SOP-visual—catalogs (.06). These results were consistent with the other results although not quite as strong. However, these marginal results must be considered in interpreting the findings. Limitations of the sample were age (young adults), social status (undergraduate students), and culture (US). Students as participants limit the ability to generalize the results to the larger population of other consumers. This study looked at only one aspect of information search–frequency of use of information sources for apparel shopping.

One finding that points out the need for further research is the lack of discriminant ability for SOP-verbal. Women and men did not differ in SOP-verbal; fashion leaders and fashion followers did not differ in SOP-verbal; high and low SOP-verbal participants did not differ in frequency of use of external sources of information. The only significant finding for SOP-Verbal was that participants low in SOP-verbal more frequently used internal sources of information than participants high in SOP-verbal. Because relying on internal information does not require conversations with others or reading written product information, low verbalizers may feel more comfortable with, and, therefore, prefer processing internal information. Perhaps low SOP-verbal consumers depend on their past experiences with particular brands or stores and satisfy their information needs by depending on brand or store loyalty.