The key purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of communication competence in the direct selling context by investigating the case of direct sellers in Malaysia. The growth in direct selling worldwide has a large influence in Malaysia. In 2016, more than 3.9 million people were involved as direct sellers and 62% of these were women. This phenomenon requires a better understanding of direct selling as a communication process. For this study, eleven informants were selected from different environments of the direct selling business. This design can incorporate a diversity of direct selling context. This research employed observations and interviews to explore what constitutes communication competence in the Malaysian direct selling process by taking direct sellers conceptions of their work as the point of face-to-face interaction with potential buyers. This study found that the relationship components of communication competence play an important role in the direct selling process. Friendly attitude, similarities, and fairly calm were among the ten relationship components that have been identified in this study. Obviously, the relationship components emerged in the five direct selling communication phases namely as the preparation phase, initial meeting phase, meeting phase, closing phase, and the communication disruption. This study advocated that direct sellers should attain to communicate competently in order to develop new relationships with their potential buyers.

In understanding the communication competence components in the direct marketing business, this study was performed. The objectuves of the paper are to identify the communication activities that represent communication competence components and the outcome of communication competence components in the Preparation Phase of the direct selling activities. Interview and observation method were employed. Acquiring knowledge related to the business and spirituality; and preparing to acquire savoirs have been demonstrated in the Preparation Phase. These preparations demonstrated direct sellers' cognitive, behavioural, and spiritual-affective abilities. The outcome that emerged from the findings were the preparation in developing their selfconfidence, enthusiastic feelings, understanding of savoirs; and becoming knowledgeable of the business.

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The purpose of this article is to provide an initial analysis of the study related to the process of receiving and responding to the WhatsApp official group messages at work. Many previous studies have focused on the usage factors, advantages and disadvantages, as well as the implications of using WhatsApp. But this paper will reveal the interpretation of a small group of employees at Universiti Utara Malaysia of their roles and actions related to WhatsApp official group messages. A total number of five administrative and academic staffs had been involved in this initial study. The results of this initial study will be used to strengthen the interview questions for the next phases of this study -focus groups and in-depth interviews, as well as the development of a questionnaire instrument. This initial study revealed that all Informants have joined at least one WhatsApp official group and have a number of other WhatsApp groups. Three dominant themes emerged and had been interpreted from the data as related to reception and feedback to the WhatsApp messages, namely the reception and message development; the use of appropriate grammar and manners; and the awareness of time value, respect differences, and message impacts to the organization. This study contributes to an understanding of the real situation of the usage of WhatsApp group in an organization where the selected employees are aware that every message they want to share with others may affect their organization.

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