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

According to the note, the manager expresses that there is a decline in the number of viewers of Super Screen Movie productions. He or she argues that the reason for this decline is the weak performance of the company in advertising its products. And therefore they need to assign more budget for advertising. However, there are some questions to them we should answer with careful before accepting director's suggestion.

First, is the report of marketing department reliable? It is possible that marketing department just had a crude survey and its report thus is not authentic in this case. If the answer to this question is not positive, then we can ignore whole the story.

Second, what does it mean to say "fewer people attended" SS-produced movies? Does it mean that people don't spend time for watching products at cinema? Then, it is very reasonably possible that people prefer to have products through other ways, say, form internet, CDs, TV shows. Thus we should first make certain about the domain of the report and whether it considered all the possible mediums for using products.

Third, the director just implies that the number of positive reviews is increased while he says nothing about the total number of reviews. Does this increase include negative reviews? If yes, then people are justified to reject the products of SSM because of many negative reviews of them, which imply that they have not high quality.

Forth, the note is just limited to quality. Are other features of the products satisfactory? For example, it is reasonable to assume the decline in viewers is due to the rising cost of products, or appearance of rivals for SSM, or a general decline in arts market. One should make sure that the only factor for the decline in viewers' number is related to the quality of products, to approve the suggestion of the director.

Finally, if we admit that the company needs to advertise for its products, we cannot be sure about the efficacy of this policy. It is possible that people these days tend to spend their time on entertainments other than movies. They may know that SSM products are of high quality products of movie industry, but they are no longer interested in these hobbies. They may spend their time on Internet or computer games, or musics. Thus the advertisements will not encourage more people.

To conclude, we need to consider more factor which may be responsible for the decline in the number of people who were interested in SSM products. Thus, the director should try to answer to above questions before making any decision.