Since a competing lower priced newspaper The Bugle was started five years ago The Mercury s circulation has declined by 10 000 readers The best way to get more people to read The Mercury is to reduce its price below that of The Bugle at least until circul

The argument claims that, the decrease in the circulation of the weekly newspaper, The Mercury is because of the introduction of the lower priced newspaper, the Bugle for the past five years.The conclusion of the argument relies on the premise that by reducing the price of the Mercury below that of the Bugle will increase the readership and will also attract the advertisers.The conclusion of the argument relies on several assumptions for which there is no clear evidence . Hence the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.

On the outset, the argument readily assumes that the readership of The Bugle is more that of The Mercury and those 10,000 readers who no longer buy the Mercury now spend their money on The Bugle.There is no circulation data or other information which can strongly substantiate that Bugle’s readership is increasing with any correlation to The Mercury’s decrease.Without this information , we cannot tell anything about the lost readers of The mercury. They may have moved to another country in mass exodus due to employment or housing issues . They may have opted for the online version of news and sees no reason for the additional expense of a newspaper or may the circulation of both the papers is on a decline. If any of the above reasons is the cause , then lowering the price will decrease the Company’s revenues without increasing the circulation.

The argument also leaves many other unanswered questions. Even if the price is a factor , the argument assumes the content of both the papers is identical. If The Bugle is a daily newspaper, it may be the readers prefer more current and updated news than the weekly version of The Mercury. It may be that the Bugle covers more impactful and engaging news and is staffed with more experienced journalists who provides more in depth reporting of the issues which has direct link with the reader, while the Mercury is filled with several unimportant issues or is specific to any particular area . In that case , decreasing the price won’t increase the circulation of The Mercury.

Finally , the argument claims without any reason that lowering the price of the paper will increase the circulation which in turn will attract more advertisers. If the advertisers are motivated with other factors then the potential for the increased circulation will not result in additional advertisement sales . Further , the argument has not compared the advertising rates of both the newspaper . Perhaps, The Bugle’s advertising rates are much lower than those of The mercury. Or, perhaps the global rate of Newspaper advertising is on the declining as the advertisers prefer other media marketing such as internet or email marketing .

Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions , it remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.