Alex Thomson

One of the country's biggest is Merry Hill shopping centre, near Dudley in the Black Country. It opened in the late 1980s on the site of an old steel works, and came of age in the last recession during the early 1990s. There are 220 major stores in the centre and in the run-up to Christmas, the car park has been packed. Where better than to assess whether consumers can, or even want, to spend us out of the recession.