According to a recent report by 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 last year. Clearly, the content of these reviews is not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not in the quality of our movies but with public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater quantity of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising.

The advertising director of Super Screen Movie Production Company in his memo concludes that the company should allocate a greater share of its budget to advertisement in order to increase their viewership. He reaches this conclusion based on the data of decreased viewership of their movies despite the increased percentage of positive reviews. However, his assertion is rife with holes and assumptions. Hence, he must answer some of the questions on his assumptions before his proposal can be adequately assessed.

Firstly, the author assumes that the increased percentage of positive reviews despite decreased viewership is actually a good sign. Yet, he provides no additional information to warrant his supposition. So, it might not be true. Perhaps the number of positive reviews hasn't gone up but just the percentage has, because the total number of reviews have decreased. For example, there may be 1 positive review out of 10 last year and this year it might be 1 out of 9. Yes, there is an increase in the percentage but this cannot be used as a basis to increase the budget. Or maybe the people who used to give negative reviews have simply abandoned watching their movies which might have caused the increase in the percentage of positive reviews. Hence, unless the author answers questions regarding the validity of such scenarios, his contention is highly weakened.

Moreover, the author goes on to assume that their viewership has decreased because of the public's lack of awareness. While doing so, he completely disregards other factors that might have caused the shrinkage. Maybe the public is aware of their quality but their movies have been pirated and hence the public watches them from the pirated source. Or maybe they couldn't attend the movies because of the unfavorable location of the cinema halls not because they are in oblivion of the quality. If any of such scenarios prove to be true, the company would benefit from working on these issues rather than increasing the budget for advertisement.

Likewise, the author assumes that an increase in the advertisement budget would burgeon the viewership of the movies, but that might not be the case. Maybe this year, all the movies have faced the decline in viewership and not because of less advertisement. Perhaps this year the country imposed nationwide lockdown that affected the viewership. It is also possible that this year the government cut the vacation short for some specific reasons that led to this result. Thus, if the author wants to increase the persuasiveness of his conclusion, he must answer questions regarding such scenarios which may have caused the decline.

All in all, the author has proposed an idea to increase the viewership of the movies produced by their company, but while doing so he has made some unwarranted assumptions. Hence, he has left room for a lot of questions, which he needs to answer before his company can deem his recommendation to be credible.