Homework answers / question archive / Read the case study and answer the following questions:    AllPets Case Study: Persuasion Theories AllPets is an online company that specializes in all things pets and has three business lines—an online store called PetStuff, a resource website called TalkingPets, and PetConnect, an online site for posting shelter dogs and cats available for adoption

Read the case study and answer the following questions:    AllPets Case Study: Persuasion Theories AllPets is an online company that specializes in all things pets and has three business lines—an online store called PetStuff, a resource website called TalkingPets, and PetConnect, an online site for posting shelter dogs and cats available for adoption

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Read the case study and answer the following questions: 

 

AllPets Case Study: Persuasion Theories AllPets is an online company that specializes in all things pets and has three business lines—an online store called PetStuff, a resource website called TalkingPets, and PetConnect, an online site for posting shelter dogs and cats available for adoption. Three separate product directors manage each of these three services. Ultimately, these directors are held accountable for their product as well as their staff.

 

 AllPets employs roughly 60 people and because of the company's small size, as well as the open attitude of upper management, AllPets has created a unique environment where individual opinions are not only heard but encouraged. Employees value one another and the work they do because their own success relies on the company's success.

 

 A collaborative work environment such as this has its downsides, however. For example, one drawback is the sheer abundance of new ideas (some good, some bad). Every idea and suggestion gets attention and needs to be researched—a time consuming and often frustrating processes because many ideas lack the resources, practicality, and efficiency to be used. 

 

As manager of the Advertising Department, Bryan Hopkins has worked for two years for AllPets and currently supervises four employees. Bryan's chief responsibility is to oversee the selection and placement of social media and digital advertising. To an untrained eye, ad placement may seem simple; however, for advertising to be effective, their procedure is fairly detailed.

 

 First, the Ad Department sets the strategy for an advertising campaign, usually on Facebook or Instagram but also on other sites, to advertise all three divisions of the company. The Ad Department then contacts the Graphics Department with an ad request, basically letting the graphics manager know what needs to be created and when it needs to be completed. After completing the ad, Graphics sends the copy back to the Ad Department for approval. Bryan checks each ad; only after he gives final approval is the ad then posted on a social media platform. Although it seems tedious, Bryan designed this procedure himself and keeps it as streamlined as possible. The digital world moves fast, so efficiency is critical. 

 

Jim Martinsky, PetConnect's project director, is extremely enthusiastic about AllPets and his division. In Bryan's view, Jim is a perfectionist who tends to complicate and overanalyze things. Recently, Jim mentioned to Bryan that AllPets might be changing its ad procedure. He wanted to schedule a meeting in the next few days to discuss the proposed changes. Jim also casually mentioned that he would like to be a part of the ad procedure process; for example, maybe the Ad Department could show him each ad before giving final approval. As manager, it was up to Bryan to determine the ad procedure, not Jim. What's more, Bryan didn't want to have someone peering over his shoulder and questioning his department's decisions. 

 

"No way am I going to show this guy every ad that comes along!" Bryan thought to himself, "Jim will want to haggle over each comma and question mark, and it'll take months to get an ad posted!"

 

 Not wanting to appear difficult, however, Bryan decided not to say anything. He figured he would wait until the next meeting when he and the other directors could properly discuss Jim's ideas in more depth. He would bring research showing how effective their digital and social ad placement has been since he took over a few years back. 

 

Later that same afternoon, Bryan passed by the graphics department's studio and spotted Jim talking with Alison, the graphics manager. Jim caught Bryan's eye and waved Bryan into the room.

 

 "Hey, Bryan! Come here—just for a minute. I've worked everything out." A bit perplexed, Bryan poked his head into the graphics studio. 

 

"Hey, Jim. I was just about to walk out the door for a meeting. What's up?" "I'm glad we ran into you! It's all set up. From now on, your department will show all ads to me before giving final approval," Jim declared, not defiantly, but rather, as if he had just solved a major world problem. "Jim, I thought we were going to have a staff meeting to discuss this. In fact, I'm not even sure that there is a problem," Bryan replied. 

 

"Well, Bryan, you know that we are always on deadline here. I wanted to get things in place before our next series of ads will be posted. You know what they say! 'Time is of the essence'!" 

 

Bryan didn't know what to say. Keeping in mind Jim's overzealous approach and recognizing that his own stress level was high, Bryan answered with a quick "Uh . . . Okay, sounds good, I'll get back to you," and headed back out the door. Although Bryan firmly believed that Jim's wasn't a good idea, he also knew that discussing it while on his way to a meeting wasn't the proper time or place to resolve it

 

. Later that afternoon, Bryan e-mailed Jim a meeting request to discuss the newly proposed ad procedure. It looked like there wasn't going to be a group discussion with the other project directors, so Bryan had to convince Jim on his own that the Ad Department's current method was a good one and that it worked. At the very least, Bryan figured they could come up with a modified ad procedure that would not inconvenience anyone who was involved. 

 

The next day, the two men met in an unoccupied office with the door closed. Bryan started the meeting, "Hi Jim, thanks for meeting with me today to discuss your new ad placement idea. Although I think your intentions are good, as the person responsible for ad placement procedure, I have some serious concerns about the plan you suggested."

 

 Bryan went on to say that Jim's idea simply was not practical for their deadline-driven industry. "We place too many ads for too many of AllPet's services; we can't run around and chase down all of the project directors for their approval when we are executing our time-sensitive strategy." Bryan expressed that Jim's new procedure created unnecessary steps, making it inefficient. "I have an alternative solution," Bryan suggested, "one that combines your idea of having extra eyes look over the ads along with my belief that we shouldn't put up additional barriers in the approval process." Jim nodded, "Okay, I'm game-what's your idea?" Bryan went on to explain his idea—graphics could show each ad to the respective project director for his or her approval prior to sending it back to the Ad Department for final approval. Bryan explained, "This way, the Ad Department's flow wouldn't be disrupted as much, and it would allow for the graphic artists and the project directors to work together on getting everything just right. This way, when you do receive the ad, you could just do our normal checking routine before posting the ad." 

 

Jim indicated that he originally had suggested this idea to Alison in the Graphics Department, but that she had expressed the same concerns that Bryan just did. "Essentially," Jim said, "Alison told me it's simply inefficient; Graphics doesn't have time to chase down project directors for each ad's approval either."

 

 As Jim began to feel as though a solution to the situation was hopeless, Bryan started asking some questions aimed at finding out exactly what the "problem" was. According to Jim, he had noticed some ads that were going out for his product that did not meet his approval. Bryan pressed Jim for more details; it turned out that "some ads" was really just two ads—one was a personal preference regarding the photo used, and the other was due to Jim's own forgetfulness about the ad he had previously approved. When pressed even further, it turned out that the real issue was a communication problem between Jim and Sean, the graphic artist who typically worked on Jim's ads. According to Jim, they didn't get along well. Just recently, Jim noticed a posted ad where an adjustment that he had requested Sean to make was not made; Jim lost trust in the ad procedure, fearing that these errors would continue to happen unless he was involved in some way. Based on Jim's story, Bryan quickly recognized that Jim's problem was not with the Ad Department's procedure, but between Jim and Sean. Bryan also knew that changing the ad procedure was not going to fix a communication problem between the two men. By listening to Jim's difficulties with working with Sean, Bryan realized that a slight change to the ad procedure, if done correctly, could benefit everyone. Together, Bryan, Jim, and Alison came up with a joint proposal. They would set up a workflow management system for Graphics, Advertising, and the project director. Once Graphics finished an ad, they would simply drop the ad in the project director's workflow in-box for review and sign-off. The project directors would agree to check their in-boxes several times a day to not hold up the process. If they agreed with the look of the ad and were happy with everything, they would sign off on the ad. The Ad Department would then check the ad as usual, give final approval, and then give Graphics the okay to post the ad to the site. If, for some reason, a project director was not happy with an ad, he or she would go directly to Graphics to work out the problems. Once satisfied, the project director would sign off on the ad for final approval. This solution left the final approval in the hands of the Ad Department while also allowing all project directors to have a say in the ads, and it avoided any inefficiency in getting approvals because ads could now just be left in the workflow system. Amazingly, all staff members involved agreed to this joint solution. A month later, all were satisfied with the new procedure. 

Case Questions 

1. Consider the tenets of social judgment theory. How does the latitude of rejection operate within this case study? What about the latitude of acceptance? How could Jim and Bryan both have used SJT principles early on to avoid the confusion and conflict that ensued following Jim's initial proposal? 

 

2. What peripheral strategies did Jim try to use to convince Bryan that there was a problem with the current ad approval method? Why didn't these strategies work? Would an elaborated message produce a different result? Explain. 

 

3. In what way(s) does Bryan experience dissonance? How is this dissonance resolved?

 

Please label each question and answer it with sufficient information and clear.