10/19/11 3:40 PM IJMS / DeLong et al / Black Leather Jacket Page 1 of 18 http://ijms.nova.edu/Fall2010/IJMS_Artcl.DeLongetal.html IJMS search engine Search Create your own Custom Search Engine Gadgets powered by Google Volume 6, Issue 2: Fall 2010 From Renegade to Regular Joe: The Black Leather Jacket’s Values for Bikers Marilyn DeLong, Kelly Gage, Juyeon Park, and Monica Sklar Introduction The traditional black leather jacket has been a constant and easily identifiable form for over half a century and continuing research of the black leather jacket shows that it has been an amazingly persistent consumer-linked product (DeLong and Park 178). However, this standard form of the black leather jacket has developed varied meanings based upon the experience of riding a motorcycle. One way of understanding this relationship is by considering the jacket’s value to its consumers: bikers. As Morris Holbrook has argued, consumer value is the “interactive relativistic experience” between the consumer and the product, and that consumer value resides not only in the product but also in those consumption experiences derived from using the product (5). Thus, to understand the significance of the black leather jacket, we must consider its value to riders. In the twentieth century, the male rider, with his bike and black leather jacket, became a symbol of rebellion and individualism. As a result, the male rider became known as a renegade. By contrast, the motorcycle rider of the twenty-first century continues to wear the black leather jacket but the image has broadened beyond that of the male renegade, to include wearers such as the regular Joe or Josephine who loves the ride, the freedom, and the sense of living on the edge. Our research reveals that the contemporary wearer is more often coming out of the ranks of the conventional, with a steady job of day-care provider, lawyer, educator, corporate executive, or real estate developer, an individual more used to complying with protocol but who is interested in stepping outside his/her persona when riding a motorcycle. This contemporary rider still wears and values the black leather jacket, but for different reasons than the twentieth-century biker. In this study, we examine the motivations for riding and the accompanying values of