Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the debate surrounding the comparative costs and benefits of town centre and out‐of‐town retail developments for consumers and to the environment has been a heated one. Informed by a largely puritanical view of consumerism, current Government policy tends...

The paper argues the need for an appraisal of the symbolic meaning of the “pub” and derivative managerialist concepts from the perspective of the consumers’ experience. Set against background developments of the “pub”, the paper explores the use of semiotics as a means of examining the...