Article

Re-defining Fashion Influentials in the Internet Age: a Spanish Case-Study based on Stylelovely.com

Abstract

Since Paul Lazarsfeld’s first study on the influentials, carried out in the forties, research on opinion leaders have been developed mainly in the political field. Nevertheless, in his studies, Lazarsfeld focused his attention on other areas such as fashion. Lazarsfeld identified influentials as those people with a “leadership almost invisible and certainly unconscious, face to face; close, informal and daily”, being able to influence in their relatives’ voting and purchasing decisions. These opinion leaders’ or influentials prescribing ability was and is today very powerful and of great interest for its study. Clearly, the influence of the Internet in society has changed the way we communicate, interact and consume. In the fashion area, a research study about the influentials after the advent of the Internet has not been done yet. As a consequence, the main goal of this research is to fulfill this deficiency by providing data of the influentials in fashion, in the Spanish case.

Keywords

Public opinion, opinion leaders, fashion, influentials, internet.