Just as in biological niches, where inhabitants constantly compete for resources and mutate over time, cereals, soft drinks, and other goods change and evolve. “Parent” products like Pepsi give rise to evolutionary “children” like diet sodas.
In addition to gradual evolution, “punctuated equilibrium” also exists in both ecological and marketing realms. Dramatic shifts in the environment force great bursts of change. Just as a natural cataclysm wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a technological cataclysm eliminated the horse and buggy 100 years ago. The biomarketer must constantly research the environment and the vagaries of each population, looking not only for the gradual mutations but also for the bursts of change. Failure to adapt product lines to either of these types of change means extinction.