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.

The note from the memo of the advertising director of Super Screen Movie Production Company states that in order to make the people aware of the good quality movies that Super Screen makes, it must allocate a greater share of its budget to advertising. This recommendation, at first might seem to make cogent case but on further scrutiny one can realise that is not the case. The evidence on which it is based must be properly evaluated and the following three questions must be asked before applying the recommendation.

The first question that must be answered is that how much has the attendance of the people watching Super Screen movies dropped? In order words, the percentage or some quantitative amount by which the attendance has decreased. If suppose, out of 200, 150 people watched Super Screen movies but later only 140 people turn up to watch the movies; the drop is not very significant. It wont be very economical to increase the advertising budget just to make sure that the 10 people who attended these movies earlier, start attending again. The quality of the movies or even the efforts made to make them aware of the good movies will be futile and thus the recommendation made perhaps will not be able to guarantee more views.

The second question that must be answered is that how does the increased positive reviews by movie reviewers relate to the attendance of people to Super Screen movies? What is the correlation between more positive reviews and increased attendance. It is assumed by the author that increased positive reviews must always cause higher attendance. But it just might be possible that the movies made by Super Screen are of not really great interest to the people, they may just dislike the movie concept and hence they are not attending them. Moreover, the answer for why the people have reduced watching Super Screen movies must be also searched for. It might also just be possible that people are busy and thus are not attending these movies. Increasing the advertising budget, will not increase the views for Super Screen if the movie-goers are not voluntarily going to watch the movies. If any of the above possibilities are the actual scenario then no efforts of increasing the advertising budget will actually increase viewership and the recommendation will fail.

Finally, the question that must be answered is that how is it known to the Super Screen producers that the reason for the decreased viewership is the lack of awareness among people. There is no evidence to prove that it is exactly the reason why people have reduced their viewings of Super Screen movies. Merely by assuming that people are unaware of these goodand positive reviews or ratings, the producers should not take an pivotal decision to increase their advertising budget. Probably the people are aware of the positive movie reviews but cannot attend these screesing due to some other reasons. If suppose a survey is conducted asking the people for their reason for not attending the movies, and in that the people respond to it that it is because of the lack of awareness that they are not attending the same, then it makes sense to increase th eadvertising budget, otherwise the above conclusion does not hold water.

In conclusion, the argument as it stands now if full of holes and rife with unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to provide answers to the above mentioned questions, then it can be said that the conclusion that is made in the original argument to increase the budget for advertising will actually lead to increase in the viewership of the Super Screen Movies.