Osborning

What’s better than a good cup of coffee in the morning? Eh...nothing. That’s why we were proud to start selling the newest addition to our company’s line of upmarket coffee machines: the Beveranator 5000. It’s only been on the market for a month or so, but we’re already hard at work on our newer and even better machine: the Beveranator 5002. (The 5001 prototype had issues.)

Anyway, our marketing team has already launched the ad campaign for the 5002, even though it’s not going to be in stores for another nine months. We wanted our customers to be excited, to be frothing at the mouth with caffeinated glee as they waited in line for a chance to be one of the first to own this magical machine.

What we didn’t want was for people to avoid buying the 5000 model and hold out for the 5002, which is, unfortunately, exactly what ended up happening. This is an example of “osborning,” also known as “the Osborne effect:” we released information about a new product too soon, and caused sales of our current products to all but stagnate. This is bad, because if we don’t have sales money coming in, we don’t have production money to make more Beveranator 5002s.

So why is it called “osborning?” Because, back in 1983, Adam Osborne, founder of the Osborne Computer Company, decided to “pre-announce” a bunch of sweet new personal computers that they were going to release in the near future. Their customers decided not to buy their current computers and wait for the new, cooler ones, but in the meantime, the lack of incoming funds had a disastrous effect on the company. Ever heard of the Osborne Computer Company? No? That’s because they went bankrupt in 1985.