Marketers in “time-based industries” such as fashion, tech and entertainment could learn valuable lessons from K-pop, where research has found that songs have a very limited time window if they are to perform well in the charts.

Manufacturing Popularity: An Ecological Model of Time-Based Competition* studied 13,750 songs and reviewed four components: the speed at which the songs became popular (the “popularity” model); their decline in popularity (the “extinction model”); methods to drive “social exposure”; and the effect of competition between rival K-pop players.

Why it matters

Transitory products such as apparel and movies don't generally stay popular for long,...