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

The memo ends with the recommendation that Super Screen should allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising. This is quite a bold statement regarding there is not much information provided to evaluate this claim. A scrutiniy regarding the validity of the recommendation brings a lot of questions about that should be answered to see if the claim is warranted.

To start with, there is mentioned that fewer people attended the movies this year than in any other year. Although this information can be useful, it is important that the trend of viewers over the past few years is made visible. If for examlpe the previous year they had a million viewers and this year they had one less viewer, the difference isn't really significant, although the statement in the memo is valid nonetheless. This can be linked with the fact that the rating has been going up during the past year. If the example about the viewers is correct, then an incresed number of positive reviews is wonderful news. However if the amount of viewers was halved this year in comparison with the previous year, then there is more reason for concern.

Out of all this, the conclusion is drawn that the problem does not lie with the quality of the movies, but with the public's lack of awareness of good movies. This might be a hasty conclusion, because one can imagine that only the people who like the movies of the Super Screen Movie Production Company remain loyal to their movie theater. This could explain the decrease of viewers but the increase of positive reviews, leading to the results presented in the memo. It can also be the case that the number of reviews has decreased, leading to less statsistics which makes it more difficult to compare this year to the previous one. Together with the previous flaw in the reasoning of the memo, this leads us to the conclusion that more information should be made available regarding the statistics of the number of viewers and the number of reviews.

Other factors could of course also play a role. The price of a cinema ticket might have gone down, giving people more for their money, which might result in a positive review in spite of the fact that the movie wasn't that good. The same is the case for all money related business with the movie industry, like for example the vending of popcorn and sodas. More information regarding external factors should therefore be provided to be able to make a complete analysis of the case.

We can conclude that the recommendation could be valid, but an answer to a few more questions should be provided. How is the trend in the number of viewers in the previous years going? How much people reviewed the movies each year? Is there a vast fan base or are there different people everytime? How about external factors that could influence the ratings? An answer on all this questions can be provided by giving elaborate details about the statistiscs used in this investigation. These results can prove the recommendation that Super Screen should allocate a greater share of its budget in the next year to reaching the public through advertising, to be warranted or not.