| Since 1990s, SMEs have been the major force in Chinese economic development, especially in the Yangtze River Delta region, and they have created a large number of successful private entrepreneurs.Compared with the SMEs'thrive, its brand development is relatively backward, and doesn't gain the competitive advantage. The brand's creative economic output, total value are not asymmetry with its world market share. For example, the amounts of SMEs'famous brands are far below market coverage, the SMEs are generally paid little attention to its brand building, most of them prefer to the OEM, the SMEs export in low prices due to their brand weakâ‘ . This situation makes the small-medium (SM) brand owners start thinking about the value and role of the brand, and pay attention to the brand building.Meanwhile, from the current research in China, the study of small-medium brands lagged far behind its growth. On the one hand, from the view of theoretical foundation, many SMEs can not find a suitable growth model or strategy for its SM brand, hence, they always scrabble the suitable growth model and approach by its self-exploration. Although the SM brands growth model by its self-exploration possesses a experience guide in the practice, it is only fit to a individual enterprise or an similar industry. Therefore, the practice needs a solid theoretical foundation to support its fast growth. On the other hand, from the growth model of the SM brand status, China's SM brands show the characteristics of short-lived and fast, a number of SM brands can quickly become famous, and then rapidly disappear. How to explain this phenomenon? As a result, the sustainable growth of SM brands becomes one of the most important issues in the market economy. It is little or even a blank in the studies of SM brands in China, the author takes the "Brands Growth Model" as theme in the relevant academic index and gets the result of zero. Above all, based on the considerations of balance between practical needs and theoretical support, this study will draw on niche theory in ecology to think how SM brands grow in inertia way and how to breakthrough, resulting its stable location and space in the brand ecosystem, and to extract the growth models of SM brands from a strategic perspective based on niche theory. The dissertation defines the SM brands growth stage from the brand life-cycle perspective. At this growth stage, the SM brands either grow based on the traditional path to gradually expand its brand niche and eventually become a big brand in its brand ecosystem, or appropriate to change the path, get into other brand ecosystem, and become a core brand, or broken through the traditional ecosystems, create a growing brand ecosystem by itself.The dissertation surrounds closely with three core issues:(1) what is SME brand niche? It includes the contents, dimensions, features, etc.. (2) which factors will drive and influence the growth model of SM brands in the brand ecosystem? (3) how are the key factors influence the growth model and their casual relation? (4) what are the growth models based on the niche theory? And how are these models promote SM brands grow stronger in the brand ecosystem? Generally speaking, the purposes of this research are to solve 3 questions, which are what the SME brand niche is, why the SM brands growth models become as well as how the growth models are.For the first question, "What is the SME brand niche", chapter 3 gives a clear definition and makes its classification, thinks the inspiration from the principles of brand niche. At the same time, the paper introduces the concept of consumer cognition into the definition of SME brand niche, and takes some small brand as a case study to test the validity and feasibility of consumer cognition in the concept of SME brand niche.Chapter 4 resolves the second issue, namely, the drivers and influencing factors of SM brands growth models. The article first lists and analysis all the relevant factors which may affect the growth models, and then extracts the main factors through the principal component analysis method, which are consumer demand for brand value, brand cooperation, brand innovation, entrepreneurs'effect, the role of government in SM brand habitats. According to the results of chapter 4, chapter 5 will solve the third question raised by "how are the key factors play roles in the SM brands growth models and their mechanism?". This chapter takes the mechanism analyze as the research object, builds the conceptual model and research hypothesis, demonstrates the importance of niche ideas in the SM brands growth models by studying the effects of key variables. At the same time, this chapter adds empirical methods to verify data on the conceptual model assumed for support or opposition by using statistical software such as SPSS, AMOS7.0. In this way, the paper analyses the nature of SM brand growth and the relationships and roles of variables in the conceptual model.Chapter 6 is proposed to solve the fourth problem, which is based on the niche theory of what the growth models are and how these models promote SM brands grow stronger in the brand ecosystem. Reference some ideas of the niche theory, the paper puts forward 6 kinds of models:the natural growth model, the cluster growth model, the co-evolution model, the ecological community growth model, the parasitic growth model, and the niche construction growth model. And then the paper does a detail elaboration of every model's formation, characteristics, growth strategy, and establishes evaluation model tree for every growth models. After that, the paper takes the SM brands respectively in High-tech industry, manufacturing industry, architecture industry and tourism industry for example, and does fuzzy evaluation by the evaluation team composed of experts and stakeholders. At last, the paper does the final statistical order, getting a different growth model for different industry corresponds to the appropriate degree.Chapter 7 is the conclusions and prospects. This chapter summarizes the research conclusions and prospects the future of the SM brands study.The dissertation uses the metaphor research method, literature research and normative research methods, empirical quantitative research methods, and describes relevant contents from qualitative and quantitative study. Through this theoretical study and empirical testing, this paper obtained the following findings:Firstly, the SMEs brand niche belongs to one of the SM brand niche, including three levels of the individual brand niche, the population brand niche and the community brand niche. This study takes the first two levels as its research objects. Fundamentally speaking, the research of SMEs brand niche is inseparable from the market acceptance and recognition, thus, the concept of "consumer cognition" is introduced into the definition of SMEs brand niche, which defines from the degree and quality of consumer cognition.Secondly, there are 5 main factors that influencing the SM growth models in the brand ecosystem, which are consumer demand for brand value, brand cooperation, brand innovation, entrepreneurs' effect, the role of government in SM brand habitats. These factors play their roles respectively from the brand value niche, brand market niche, brand technology niche and so on.Thirdly, in the five principal factors, the factor of consumer demand for brand value and the factor of the role of government in SM brand habitats are the starting point of the explanatory variables for SM brands growth model:from the market behavior, the factor of consumer demand for brand value is the formation of SM brand growth model, it is impossible to promote the formation of SM brands in the corresponding brand value niche without the consumer demand for brand value, therefore, there is no meaning of the brand; from the subjective initiative, the entrepreneurs effect is the soft element of the formation of brand growth model. Nowadays, most of the SM brands are rooted in the small-medium private enterprises, where the entrepreneurs play important roles. The entrepreneurs' brand awareness can deeply dominate the brand growth; from the current situation of SM brands in China, the governments play a very large role in the SM brands growth model, for example, the policies can lead directly to the regional cluster for SM brands, such as the SM brands cluster in the Yangtze River Delta region, the new SM brands cluster in the Bohai Bay, the SM brands cluster in the urban high-tech zones, the SM brands cluster in the urban clothing wholesale, the SM brands cluster in the urban household, etc., all these cluster are explained the role of SM brands habitats government. The factors of brand cooperation and brand innovation are respectively the mediator variables of the conceptual model, both the factor of consumer demand for brand value and the factor of the role of SM brands habitats government are obligatory to transit by the above two variables. The factor of the entrepreneurs effect is the moderator variable of the conceptual model, which moderates the relationship between the consumer demand for brand value (x1) and the SM growth (y), the effect of SMEs entrepreneurs can change the direction and the strength of x1 to y, when the SMEs entrepreneurs play an active role, it will promote the impact of x1 to y, and vice versa.Fourthly, according to the brand niche theory, as well as the key factors in the mechanism conceptual model, the paper derives six kinds of SM brands growth models: the natural growth model, the cluster model, the co-evolutionary growth model, the ecological community growth model, the parasitic growth model, and the niche construction growth model. Through the AHP-fuzzy evaluation of each model, we can see the former three kinds of growth model suitable for high-tech industry are respectively the natural growth model, the parasitic growth model, the cluster growth model; the former three kinds of growth model suitable for manufacturing industry are respectively the cluster growth model, the co-evolutionary growth model, the niche construction growth model; the former three kinds of growth model suitable for the architecture industry are respectively the co-evolutionary growth model, the brand niche construction and the natural growth model; the former three kinds of growth model suitable for tourism industry are respectively the ecological communities growth model, the niche construction growth model, and the co-evolutionary growth model.The innovation of this study is mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1) the study thinks the growth of SM brands from the niche theory, proofs that it is the natural status for the SM brands growing phenomenon from the natural perspective. All of these are want to provide theoretical support for the SM brands and give the confidence and guidance for the SMEs entrepreneurs. (2) the study introduces the concept of consumer cognition to define the concept of SMEs brand niche. (3) the study extracts five major factors of SM brands growth model, and establishes the corresponding mechanism conceptual model. (4) the study puts forward 6 kinds of SM brands growth models based on the brand ecosystem and the brand niche concept, and does the evaluation and arrangement the fit of every model in four typical industry.
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