Argument:

The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.

"According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

My Response:
The marketing team's recommendation of allocating a greater share to marketing budget and its assumption that this will result in more people attending Super Screen-produced movies and will thereby will result in increased viewership is flawed.

In order to truly determine reduced viewership over time, it is imperative to understand the reason why fewer people are attending Super Screen produced movies over time, as compared to previous years. It may be possible that alternate movie viewing platforms such as Netflix and Vudu and other online websites have reduced overall movie goers to theaters resulting in reduced viewership of public screenings. It is also possible that movie goers prefer renting movies from kiosks such as Redbox and prefer watching them at home rather than going to movie theatres. Could the movie viewership have decreased because the movies are not being screened at a convenient location for movie goers? Maybe movie goers prefer watching movie at multiplexes and Super Screen movies are not screed at multiplexes. It is therefore most important to determine movie goers trends to understand reduced viewership. Also, overall movie viewers on all platform need to be indentified and compared with total viewers from perious year to truly determine whether movie viewership has indeed decreased or not.

The advertising director's memo also assumes increase in percentage of positive reviewes over last year should result in increase in viewership. It is necessary to compare the total number of viewers writing movie reviews last year as compared to total number of viewers writing movie reviews this year and comparing the overall positive reviews versus overall number of reviews. Comparing this percentage will surely be able to determine whether postive reviews increased only because the overall number of reviewers increased this year or indeed truly more people watching are providing positive reviews because content has truly improved.

The assumption that the conents of reviewers are not reaching enough of prospective viewers and thereby resulting in reduced movie viewership is also flawed. Only allocating greater share to its next year's budget for reaching the public through advertising will not be sufficient. It remains to be determined whether the advertising and therfore movie reviews really affects customer choices in watching a movie or not. In order to answer this question, customers need to be surveyed to check how many customer's movie viewership preferences are affected because of reading reviews. Maybe certain movie goers go to movies because they like the movie star, maybe certain viewers only go for the dolby surround sound experience, maybe some like the ambiance of the movie theater or for the popcorn. It reamains to be determined whether a movie goer's movie watching preference is affected positively because of a certain review or not.

It would certainly be necessary to determine answers to above questions before truly being able to determine whether increasing the budget for advertising will result in increased movie viewership or not.