Employee benefits in small medium enterprises (SMES): practice and challenges

This paper examines the emerging issues in the practice of Employee Benefits (EB) in SMEs.An insight of the types of employee benefits (EB) rationally offered in business is brought forward with its importance.Costs, minimum wage policy, non-monetary benefits, tax implications and cafeteria plan flexibility have been identified as issues and challenges for EB practices in SMEs.This paper contributes knowledge on the contemporary state of EB to the SMEs

Determinants of Sales Force Performance in Banking Sector: A Case of Malaysia

Globalisation, deregulation, technology, competition and new customers’ needs influence the banks to adopt marketing approach in promoting their product and services to generate income. In this aspect, personal selling which focuses on selling skills of banking employees becomes a very important banking function. This study intends to investigate the relationship between the determinants namely teamwork, learning, leadership, communication and, high performance culture and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Inspite of the importance of KPI in measuring performance of salesforce, there is a lack of published empirical findings to explain the influence of these predictors on KPI achievement in banking sector.This study reported that the model explains 0.21 percent of the variance in KPI achievement. In which teamwork and high performance culture are found to be positive and significantly related. This new finding appears to imply that bank should cultivate and promote teamwork and high performance culture to ensure KPI highly achievable and enhance banks profitability

Mortgage selection and consumer confusion in the Malaysian mortgage market

The study aims to investigate the criteria used by mortgage consumers in deciding their mortgage choice. To achieve the objective, questionnaires were distributed to mortgage consumers who took up mortgage between year 2007 to 2011.The results show that consumers perceived interest rate as the most important factor in determining their mortgage choice. However, the lowest interest rate is not the ultimate determinant factor, interest rate be considered in isolation. Consumers also need to take into account the ability to service the monthly repayment and the amount is a function of the loan tenure. Ultimately, the ability to service the monthly repayments would determine the eligibility to obtain a mortgage. Therefore, consumers’ confusion is related to the level of interest rate since interest rate is not the sole determinant of mortgage choice

Consumer mortgage information search and information disclosures practices in Malaysia

The objective of the study is to examine consumers’ mortgage information search in deciding the choice of mortgage provider.The housing loan taken by Malaysian household has contributed about 45% of the total household debt.This implies that buying a house is the single, most expensive and major decision that any household has undertaken. Moreover, determining mortgage choices is complex for potential house buyers as mortgage market in Malaysia is exacerbated by various mortgage packages offer by conventional, Islamic financial institutions and non- financial institutions.Previous studies provided evidence that buyers must consider many factors before they derived at their most desirable mortgage package. Findings from this study revealed that housing developers and mortgage lenders are the most sought after medium by mortgage consumers when they search for mortgage information. Top four criteria perceived as critical by mortgage consumers are loan tenure, monthly repayment amount, interest rate (or profit rate in the case of Islamic financing) and margin of financing.The findings also showed there is fair disclosure of information to mortgage consumers in Malaysia