The college students as a market segment are of immensely importance in India in terms of both, magnitude and spending capacity. The study evaluates the shopping behavior of urban college students for apparel products in terms of psychological variables, store-choice variables as well as interpersonal influence. It was found that the college students and older customers differ in their shopping orientations and older customers not bargain-consciousness, need for variety and best quality, are more brand loyal, have higher price quality perception, price-consciousness, need for nearness and ambience than college students. Different factors accounted for the influence on students for apparel purchase—parents having the highest influence followed by peer store approval, friends' influence and peer product influence.

The Indian textile industry has a tradition of over 5000 years. In the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime, the textile industry of India is expected to be propelled as a major force next only to that of China. The Vision Statement prepared by the Indian Cotton Mills' Federation has projected that the industry has the potential to reach a size of $85 bn by 2010. India's share in the global textile and clothing trade is expected to reach 6 percent in 2010 (from 3 percent in 2002) (Venkataswamy, 2005). There is, thus, immense potential for the Indian textile industry. The Union Finance Minister while presenting budget of 2006 announced a major reduction in excise duty on man-made fiber and filament from 16 percent to 8 percent to boost domestic competitiveness of the textile industry (Chakraborty, 2006). The apparel retailers may, therefore, rejoice with the lowering of excise burdens. To reap profit in the textile value chain, branding is necessary. An analysis of retailing or the distribution aspect of apparel is concerned, from 2001 onwards, organized retailing has accelerated drastically. While through 1990s organized retail in India added just 1 million sq. ft. of space a year, in 2003 alone 10 million sq. ft. was added by the industry. Retail consultancy, KSA Technopark, estimated that around 200 malls are likely to come up in 2005 and 2006. Over the next two years organized retailing will grow from 2 percent to 5-6 percent of the total retail pie.

At present, top six cosmopolitan Indian cities account for 66 percent of total organized retailing (Chakraborty, 2006). At present, clothing and textiles has 36 percent of organized retailing. The retail sales of clothing and accessories was Rs. 1000 bn in 2001 and sooner or later global retailers will enter India (Retail, Businessworld Marketing Whitebook, 2005, pp. 237-239). The domestic clothing, textiles and fashion accessories market is estimated to be Rs. 80,000 cr and about 13.6 percent of this retail market is organized (India Retail Report, 2005, p. 38). As far as consumer spend is concerned, clothing and footwear accounted for 14.2 percent of the total consumer spend in 2001-02, 17.1 percent in 2002-03, 21 percent in 2003-04 and 24.2 percent in 2004-05 (Vaish and Kohli-Khandekar, 2006). Hence, it is obvious that there has been a steady increase in consumer spend on clothing and footwear over the past few years.

Management Research Magazine, Psychological Variables, World Trade Organization, WTO, Indian Cotton Mills Federation, Market Segments, Multibranded Outlets, MBOs, India Retail Report, Literature Review, Departmental Stores, Dhiraj Sons Fashion World, Multi-brand Stores, Brand-Loyalty, Price-quality Association, Principal Components Analysis.