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Will the second decade of the 21st Century see the end of the low-cost phenomenon? It will certainly not be easy for European consumers to stop demanding the low prices that they have become so used to over the previous ten years. But excessive efforts by many companies to bring down prices could sound the death knell for very low prices, as they will simply become unsustainable in many sectors, with costs forcing prices back up. Obviously there will always be customers who want lower prices and somebody will have to meet the demand, but emphasis on selling at the lowest price possible may turn out to be very costly. Clients are consistently demanding lower prices at the time of each purchase and companies can only react by reducing costs. This volume shows that the only way to do this, is to reinvent the business model. New consumers, new pricing, new brands, new strategies.

Barcelona after the Olympic Games
At the end of the eighties Barcelona was looking for its new vocation, as did most towns of an international size. To get adapted to its new functions, a "commercial logic" had to be integrated in its management, in order to sell the Barcelona product as well inside as outside of the city. The olympic games emerged as the means to meet the challenge and accomplished this. The economic possibilities and the creation of transport infrastructures, hotels and sporting infrastructures have been playing a double role : dynamizing the cities' activity so much that it has become an important competitor to other European metropoles and rehabilitating its image in the minds of its inhabitants as well as of those -professionals and tourists -it could interest. Nowadays, the new challenge Barcelona has to meet is to prove that it can integrate the olympics' results into long run economic and social life.