Opportunities and issues in empowering differently-abled people into productivity: a study based on Ampara district, Sri Lanka

Disability is a normal phenomenon in the sense that it exists in all societies, affecting predictable and identifiable proportions of each population. Disability activities are economic activities, which generate economic output and income just like other economic activities. Nevertheless, expenditures on disability are typically viewed as constituting an economic burden. This likely stems from the fact that most expenditures on disability have traditionally come either from government budgets, making them burdensome to taxpayers, or charitable remittances, making them charity, which necessarily implies a burden. Integrating disabled people into the labor force in a productive manner is a challenging but important step. Empowerment is all about giving official authority to an individual to do something and/or promoting the self-actualization or influence of someone by making someone stronger and more confident. Development oriented disability empowerment policies, programs and strategies are those that seek to reduce the economic costs of disability by increasing the functionality of people with disabilities and reducing the barriers that impede their access to social and economic opportunities. This research has attempted to study the available opportunities to empower disables and to identify the issues which are significant threat to empowering disables which in turn increase the cost of families with disabled persons and government expenditure to protect these disabled persons

The case of Islamic Bank in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is one of the few non-Islamic countries to have legislated for Islamic banking. Islamic banking and finance is a emerging industry in sri lanka where there is a fully fledge islamic bank and other conventional banks operating islamic windows providing services to wide range of customers. This study is designed to examine the effects of the following factors: attitude; social influence; religious obligation; and pricing of Islamic financing, on the intention to use Islamic financing. Data were collected through questionnaire and used SPSS 16.0 to analyze the data using regression analysis. The study found two determinants to be significant in influencing the intention to use Islamic financing, namely, consumer attitude and religious obligation. Social influence and pricing of Islamic financing were found to be insignificant

Impact of atmospheric design on consumer purchasing behavior at self- serving convenience store

The main aim of this study was to investigate the impact of atmospheric design on consumer purchasing behavior at self-serving convenience stores in Ampara District, Sri Lanka. Today, retail industry became highly competitive with the increasing number of convenience and other types of retail stores in the area. Hence, the retailers need to be more customer focused and have to differentiate from their competitors by making their atmospheric design more attractive to consumers and to encourage them to spend more time, money, purchase more merchandises and to stimulate their repeat purchase intention. A survey research was employed to collect primary information from 292 customers from convenience stores in Ampara District. Atmospheric design factors such as, product assortment, crowd density, and store floor space were used to identify the impact of atmospheric design on consumer purchasing behavior. Convenience sampling was employed for data collection using a questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale. SPSS 20.0 was used to analyze the data. Product assortment, crowd density and store floor space have significant impact on consumer purchasing behavior at self-serving convenience stores in Ampara District