Construct · 6 fields · 7 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
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The full range of environmental conditions and resources within which a species can maintain a viable population. Grinnell introduced the niche in 1917 as the place a species occupies in its habitat, the set of conditions that let the California thrasher persist. Hutchinson recast it in 1957 as an n-dimensional hypervolume: each axis is an environmental variable, such as temperature, humidity, or prey size, and the niche is the region of that space in which the species survives and reproduces. The referent is a species and its relation to conditions, not an organism's behaviour and not a market. What marks this meaning is that the niche is defined by the environment mapped against the species' tolerances, and it can exist whether or not the species is currently present.[2][1]
The process by which organisms, through their own activity, modify the selective environment they and their descendants face. Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman set it out in 2003 as a second inheritance system running alongside genes: beavers build dams, earthworms alter soil chemistry, and those altered surroundings feed back to change the selection pressures acting on later generations. The referent is not a region of space a species fits into but a causal process running the other way, from the organism to its environment. Where the ecological niche describes conditions the species must match, niche construction describes how the species changes those conditions, so the two meanings share the word while pointing in opposite directions.[3]
The position and breadth of resources an organizational population draws on to survive, borrowed from ecology and applied to firms. Hannan and Freeman's 1977 population ecology of organizations treats a set of organizations of the same form as a population competing for a finite resource base, and niche width distinguishes specialists, which draw on a narrow band of resources, from generalists, which spread across a wide one. The referent is a population of organizations and its resource space, not a single species and not a marketer's customers. The word and the underlying ecological metaphor carry over from Hutchinson and Grinnell, but the unit is a set of firms, and the claim is about which organizational forms survive in stable versus variable environments.[4]
A narrow, specialized segment of a market that a firm targets deliberately, choosing to serve a small group of customers well rather than compete for the mass market. Dalgic and Leeuw's 1994 account treats niche marketing as a positioning strategy: identify a segment with distinct needs, tailor the offering to it, and defend it against larger rivals for whom it is too small to pursue. The referent is a chosen customer segment and a firm's strategy toward it, not a species' tolerances and not an ecological process. The word travels from biology into management, but here the niche is something a firm selects and occupies on purpose, and the test is profit within the segment, not the survival of a population.[5]
In oncology, niche refers to the pre-metastatic niche, sites in distant organs that bone marrow-derived cells prepare before tumour cells arrive. This meaning comes from Kaplan (2005) in Nature.[6]
In transition studies, niche refers to a protected space in which a new technology can develop shielded from mainstream market selection, as in strategic niche management. This meaning comes from Kemp (1998) in Technology Analysis & Strategic Management.[7]
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