| According to traditional theories of regional economics, there is no competition among cities at all. Especially according to the theory of central places of Christaller, cities can produce almost every thing they need. Trade between cities only limited to those products that they can not produce. So, there would form an orderly and strict system of division of labor among cities. No competition was needed.But, this doesn't conform to realities. In fact, cities not only contend for resources, capitals and talented persons, but also contend for their consumers in the whole world. Under the condition of the tendency of globalization and the increasing mobility of factors of production, urban competition has become a fact which we can not get round. At the just moment, China entered its accelerating period of urbanization. According to 2005 Report of China's Sustainable Development Strategy, which was newly published by the research group on sustainable development of China Academy of Sciences, China's urbanization rate would increase from now 40% to about 75% by the middle of this century. But, the increased 35 percent would not distribute evenly among all cities. Instead, there must be indifferences. Which cities would get more developing opportunities? Which cities would be pushed aside and decline? Which cities would enlarge their sizes? And which cities would shrink day by day? This is an important question that every city must face with in China.After 1990s, facing with increasingly fierce competition of cities, domestic and foreign scholars began to study urban competitiveness. All these theories can be roughly divided into three aspects: one is the measurement of urban competitiveness; one is to analyze the factors of urban competitiveness; the other is to seek to the strategy of improving urban competitiveness. But, all these researches didn't answer two questions. First, what do the cities compete for? That is, what is the goal of urban competitiveness? Second, by what ways can we realize urban competitiveness?This essay argues that the realization of urban competitiveness depends on two questions. One is how to attract relevant factors of production under the condition of their increasingly mobility. One is how to change the factors of production to output that would be purchased by consumers. Chasing profit is the direct drive of the mobility of factors of production. Chasing the maximum of profit in fact is the behavior motive of investors. Along with the investor's coming, relevant factors of production would follow in. Further, in order to realize the maximum of profit, investors must realize the sale of products. Only when the output of cities were accepted by consumers, could cities realize their values. Therefore, the direct goal of urban competition is to contend for investors and consumers. In order to enhance urban competition, we must know how to attract investors and talented persons, how to let consumers buy our products. So, this thesis suggests that from an economic sense, city competitiveness is a city's exclusive ability of continuing attraction of outside investors and consumers.Therefore, the research of city competitiveness should have a macro angle of view but to begin from micro analysis. That is, we must research the choice behavior of investors and consumers. How can we let investors invest our city and let consumers choose our products and services? For this purpose, a carrier must be found to transmit information of cities to outside, which would influent the choice behavior of investors and consumers. In consideration of this, we put forward brand economics. We hope to solve the choice problem of human beings based on former researches. In this thesis, that is to solve the realization of city competitiveness. Under condition of surplus economy, similarity of products and improving consume level, price is no longer the only reason for consumers to buy products, and no longer the only reason for investors to choose their business places. Now, brand becomes the reliable factors to select. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to research why and how brands can improve cities' exclusive ability of controlling outside resources and market Specifically, it aims to research how the product brands, industry brands and city brand influence the selecting behavior of investors and consumers.Then, how does the city brand impact city competitiveness on earth? Under three basic hypothesis: the mobility of factors of production, the limitation of demands, the public of government officers, this thesis analyzed the impact of city brand on the choice behaviors of consumers and investors respectly. We suppose that consumers seek for the minimum of choice cost under a certain price. After analysis, we concluded the mechanism of the influence of city brand on consumers: once the consume category is determined, the demand it can satisfy is determined, so is the price. Conbination of the two decided the consume demand with purchase wants and power. Supplymented by pricise brand strategy, we can asure the minimum of choice cost of consumers. As the same, we suppose that investors seek for the minimum of choice cost under certain entry cost and predicted revenue. Afer analysis, we concluded the mechanism of the infuence of city brand on investors: under certain number of investors, how to determine an invest category supplymented by pricise brand strategy to reduce investors' choice cost and attract this type of investors.After clarify the brand mechanism of city competitiveness, this thesis put forward its core model: the attraction model of city brand based on the traditional regional theories. In this model, it reduced all the attractive factors of city brand to five main factors, which were divided into three types. The first type has two factors (market and costs), which impact investors; the second is the category brands in city brand set, which impact consumers; the final one is the disturbing factors, including the identification of outside investors and consumers and the efficiency of city government. Through static and dynamic analysis on the attraction model of city brand, we drew the basic conclusion. First, statically, when the city brand strategy is perfect, the closer to 1 is the composite index of the degree of city brand category, the greater is the city brand attraction. If a city wants to improve the city brand attraction, it must improve its degree of brand category constantly. The simple repeat of low degree of brand category can not contribute to the composite index. Second, dynamically, the attraction power of city brand depends on three factors: the composite index of the degree of city brand category B, the size of city brand set m and the city brand strategy set S. To maximize the attraction of city brand in long term, there are two practical ways under the prerequisite of S=1. When the city competitiveness is strong, it should take a strategy of decentralizing risks and foster more brands of high category degree. When the city brand is weak, it is difficult for all brands reaching to B→1. That is, it is difficult to assure high category degree. It should take single brand strategy to break through from one point. This explained why big cities should be powerful and small cities should have their own characteristics.As a research of applied economics, after constructing an explanation model, this thesis aims to the study of resolving model. The resolving model includes two parts: the SIC model of city brand positioning and the model of economic strategy of city brand. Using the positioning theory of Al Reis and Jack Trout, this thesis firstly differentiated traditional pushing model of city brand positioning from the pulling model of city brand positioning. It pointed out that cities could not make their own wishes and directions of development as the base of positioning, but should begin with potential target consumers and seek a single benefit point to satisfy the preference of target consumers. By doing so, cities can determine a category and form city brand positioning. Then, centering this positioning, cities can formulate their brand economic strategies to assure that this positioning can be transferred to target consumers precisely and the promises of city brands be fulfilled. Then, this thesis pointed out that the city brand positioning could not be accomplished in one move. The city brand positioning include city's space positioning, industry positioning and category positioning. Every city is the core of a certain region. Firstly, city positioning must determine which range of core the city is. This is the basic limitation of city development. Then, a city must determine what kind of core it is in this limited space. That is industry positioning. A city can determine what kind of industry and products it will develop. Finally, space positioning and industry positioning only give city brand a shell. To determine the core of city brand must carry a category positioning. A city must determine its product category and investment category further. Because product category is made by enterprises in competition, what the city government can do is investment category. Summing up the SIC model, we can get a three-division map combined with city space positioning, industry positioning and category positioning. This map classifies the city brand positioning into eight modes. In which, the third one and fourth one are unrealistic. The first one, fifth one and the seventh one are undesirable. Only the second, sixth and the eighth one are desirable.In above, we supposed that the city brand strategies are perfect, that is S = 1. The second part of the resolving model, the economic strategy of city brand is aimed to improve the precision of the economic strategies of city brand under certain composite index of city brand category. This thesis concluded six economic strategies of city brand. According to the sequence of implement, they are industry strategy, environment strategy, institute strategy, investment strategy and path strategy. Then it analyzes the implication methods of these strategies respectively.
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