• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.6-15
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• 1993

Background: Positive end, expiratory pressure (PEEP) has become one of the standard therapies for adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Total static compliance has been proposed as a guide to determine the size of PEEP ('best PEEP') which is of unproven clinical benefit and remains controversial. Besides increasing functional residual capacity and thus improving oxygenation, PEEP stimulate prostacyclin secretion and was proposed for the treatment of acute pulmonary embolism. But little is known about the effect of PEEP on hemodynamic and gas exchange disturbances in acute pulmonary embolism. Methods: To study the validity of total static compliance as a predictor of 'best PEEP' in ARDS and acute pulmonary embolism, experimental ARDS was induced in mongrel dog with oleic acid and acute pulmonary embolism with autologous blood clot. Then hemodynamic and gas exchange parameters were measured with serial increment of PEEP. Results:In ARDS group, total static compliance and oxygen transport were maximal at 5 cm$H_2O$, and decreased thereafter (p<0.05). With increment of PEEP, arterial oxygen tension ($PaO_2$) and arterial carbon dioxide tension ($PaCO_2$) increased and cardiac output and physiological shunt decreased. In pulmonary embolism group, total static compliance, oxygen transport, physiological shunt and cardiac output decreased and $PaO_2$ and $PaCO_2$ increased with increment of PEEP (p<0.05). Comparing the change induced by increment of PEEP by 1 cm$H_2O$ in ARDS group with that in pulmonary embolism group, there was no significant difference between two groups except cardiac output which decreased more in pulmonary embolism group (p<0.05). In ARDS group, oxygen transport and total static compliance increased after PEEP application, and total static compliance was maximal at the PEEP level where oxygen transport was maximal. However in pulmonary embolism group, oxygen transport and total static compliance decreased after application of PEEP. There was significant correlation between change of total static compliance and change of oxygen transport in both groups. Conclusion: In both ARDS and acute pulmonary embolism, it can be concluded that total static compliance is useful as a predictor of 'best PEEP'.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.305-311
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• 2006

Purpose : GnRH analogues(GnRHa) are used to treat central precocious puberty(CPP). However, in some patients, the GV decrease is so remarkable that it impairs predicted adult height(PAH); and there fore, the addition of growth hormone(GH) is suggested. We analysed the growth changes during two years and final adult height(FAH) in girls with idiopathic CPP treated with combined therapy, compared with those of girls treated with GnRHa alone. Methods : For the analysis, we classified the patients, who was treated for longer than two years, into three groups depending on the initial PAH and combination of GH; PAH_L, treated with GnRHa and PAH less than midparental height(MPH) - 5 cm. PAH_H, treated with GnRHa and PAH greater than MPH - 5 cm. GnRHa＋GH, combined GH treatment, regardless of PAH before treatment. We analysed the GV and PAH change during the first two years and FAH. Results : In PAH_L, the PAH(SDS) at first year of therapy was significantly increased to $153.5{\pm}6.5cm(-1.4{\pm}1.3)$ from $149.7{\pm}6.4cm(-2.1{\pm}1.3)$ before treatment(P=0.004). In PAH_H, there was no significant increase in PAH during the two years of treatment. During the first year of combination of GH and GnRHa, GV and PAH increased significantly. We observed significant increases in FAH, comparing to the initial PAH in the PAH_L and GnRHa＋GH groups. The height gains(FAH - initial PAH) were significantly higher in the PAH_L and GnRHa＋GH groups than that in the PAH_H group. Conclusion : This study suggests the FAH and height gains are improved in patients, whose predicted adult height before treatment was shorter than those with higher predicted adult height, with the treatment of GnRHa alone or in combination with GH. GH could not improve the final adult height, but compensated the growth in patients whose growth velocity was decelerated by GnRHa alone.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.62-66
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• 2013

Purpose: I-131 is a radioisotope widely used for thyroid gland treatments. The physical half life is 8.01 and characterized by emitting beta and gamma rays which is used in clinical practice for the purpose of acquiring treatment and images. In order to reduce the recurrence rate after surgery in high-risk thyroid cancer patients, the remaining thyroid tissue is either removed or the I-131 is used for treatment during relapse. In cases of using a high dosage of radioactive iodine requiring hospitalization, the patient is administered dosage in the hospital isolation ward over a certain period of time preventing I-131 exposure to others. By checking the radiation amount emitted from patients before discharge, the patients are discharged after checking whether they meet the legal standards (50 uSv/h). After patients are discharged from the hospital, the contamination level is checked in many parts of the ward before the next patients are hospitalized and when necessary, decontamination operations are performed. It is expected that there is exposure to radiation when measuring the ward contamination level and dose check emitted from patients at the time of discharge whereby the radiation exposure by health workers that come from the patients in this process is the main factor. This study analyzed the correlation between discharge dose of patients and ward contamination level through a variety of factors such as renal functions, gender, age, dosage, etc.). Materials and Method: The study was conducted on 151 patients who received high-dosage radioactive iodine treatment at Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital during the period between 8/1/2011~5/31/2012 (Male: Female: 31:120, $47.5{\pm}11.9$, average dosage of $138{\pm}22.4$ mCi). As various factors expected to influence the patient discharge dose & ward contamination such as the beds, floors, bathroom floors, and washbasins, the patient renal function (GFR), age, gender, dosage, and the correlation between the expected Tg & Tg-Tb expected to reflect the remaining tissue in patients were analyzed. Results: In terms of the discharge dose and GFR, a low correlation was shown in the patient discharge dose as the GFR was higher (p < 0.0001). When comparing the group with a dosage of over 150mCi and the group with a lower dosage, the lower dosage group showed a significantly lower discharge dose ($24{\pm}10.4uSv/h$ vs $28.7{\pm}11.8uSv/h$, p<0.05). Age, gender, Tg, Tg-Tb did not show a significant relationship with discharge dose (p> 0.05). The contamination level in each spot of the treatment ward showed no significant relationship with GFR, Tg, Tg-Tb, age, gender, and dosage (p>0.05 ). Conclusion: This study says that discharge of the dose in the patient's body is low in GFR higher and Dosage 150mCi under lower. There was no case of contamination of the treatment ward, depending on the dose and renal association. This suggests that patients' lifestyles or be affected by a variety of other factors.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.31-36
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• 2013

Purpose: Measure gastric emptying time (GET: Gastric Emptying Time) is a non-invasive and quantitative evaluation methods, mainly by endoscopic or radiological examination confirmed no mechanical obstruction in patients with symptoms of congestion is checked. Such tests are not common gastric emptying time measured esophageal cancer patients (who underwent esophagectomy) patients after surgery for gastric emptying time was measured test. And the period of time for more than one year after the gastric emptying time measurement was performed. By comparing the two kinds of tests in the chest cavity after surgery as the evaluation of gastrointestinal function tests evaluate the usefulness of GET, and will evaluate the characteristics of the image. Materials and Methods: 93 patients who underwent esophagectomy with gastric emptying time measurement of subject tests immediately after surgery and after 1 year or longer were twice. Preparation of the patient before the test is more than 12 hours of overnight fasting is important, in addition to the medicine or to stop smoking, and diabetes insulin injections should be early in the morning is ideal to test. Generally labeled with $^{99m}Tc-DTPA$ resin which is used to make steamed egg, seaweed and fermented milk with a high viscosity after eating, three hours in the standing position was measured. Evaluation of gastric emptying curves on the way intragastric radioactivity level by 50% the time (half-time [T1/2]) was calculated, based on the half-life was divided into three steps: over 180 minutes was defined as delayed gastric emptying, within 180minutes was defined as intermediate gastric emptying and when all the radioisotopes were dumped into the jejunum as soon as swallowed, was defined as rapid gastric emptying. Results: Gastric emptying time of a typical images stomach of antrum and fundus additional images appear stronger over time move on to the small intestine. but esophageal cancer who underwent esophagectomy side of the thoracic cavity showed a strong image. Immediately after surgery, the half-time (T1/2) of rapid gastric emptying appeared to 12.9%, intermediate gastric emptying appeared to 52.7%, delay gastric emptying appeared to 34.4%. After more than a year the results of the half-life after surgery, 67% of rapid gastric emptying to intermediate gastric emptying was changed, 69% of delay gastric emptying to intermediate gastric emptying changed. Intermediate gastric emptying worse in patients rapid gastric emptying and the delay gastric emptying is 24% in the case. Conclusion: Esophagectomy for esophageal cancer who underwent half-time measurement test (T1/2) rapid gastric emptying and delay gastric emptying are the result of the comparison over time, changes were observed intermediate gastric emptying. Mainly seeing of gastric emptying time measurement in the esophagus instead of thoracic cavity to check the evaluation of gastrointestinal function can be useful even means. And segmentation criteria and narrow time interval of checking if more accurate information and analysis of the clinical diagnosis and evaluation seems to be done.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.327-334
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• 2001

Purpose : To find out the role of postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy in the treatment of rectal cancer by comparing survival, pelvic control, complication rate, and any prognostic factor between surgery alone and postoperative radiotherapy group. Materials and methods : From Feb. 1982 to Dec. 1996 total 212 patients were treated by radical surgery with or without postoperative radiotherapy due to rectal carcinoma of modified Astler-Coiler stage $B2\~C3$. Of them, 18 patients had incomplete radiotherapy and so the remaining 194 patients were the database analyzed in this study. One hundred four patients received postoperative radiotherapy and the other 90 patients had surgery only. Radiotherapy was peformed in the range of $39.6\~55.8\;Gy$ (mean: 49.9 Gy) to the whole pelvis and if necessary, tumor bed was boosted by $5.4\~10\;Gy$. Both survival and pelvic control rates were calculated by Kaplan-Meier method and their statistical significance was tested by Log-rank test. Multivariate analysis was peformed by Cox proportional hazards model. Results : 5-year actuarial survival rate (5YSR) and 5-year disease-free survival rate (5YDFSR) of entire patients were $53\%\;and\;49\%$, respectively. 5YSRs of surgery alone group and adjuvant radiotherapy group were $63\%\;vs\;45\%$, respectively (p=0.03). This difference is thought to reflect uneven distribution of stages between two treatment groups (p<0.05 by $\chi^2-test$) with more advanced disease patients in adjuvant radiotherapy group. 5YSRs of surgery alone vs adjuvant radiotherapy group in MAC B2+3, C1, C2+3 were $68\%\;vs\;55\%$ (p=0.09), $100\%\;vs\;100\%$, $40\%\;vs\;33\%$ (p=0.71), respectively. 5YDFSRs of surgery alone vs adjuvant radiotherapy group in above three stages were $65\%\;vs\;49\%$ (p=0.14), $100\%\;vs\;100\%$, $33\%\;vs\;31\%$ (p=0.46), respectively. 5-year pelvic control rate (5YPCR) of entire patients was $72.5\%$. 5YPCRs of surgery alone and adjuvant radiotherapy group were $71\%\;vs\;74\%$, respectively (p=0.41). 5YPCRs of surgery alone vs adjuvant radiotherapy group in B2+3, C1, C2+3 were $79\%\;vs\;75\%$ (p=0.88), $100\%\;vs\;100\%$, $44\%\;vs\;68\%$ (p=0.01), respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that only stage was significant factor affecting overall and disease-free survival in entire patients and also in both treatment groups. In view of pelvic control, stage and operation type were significant in entire patients and only stage in surgery alone group but in adjuvant radiotherapy group, operation type instead of stage was the only significant factor in multivariate analysis as a negative prognostic factor in abdominoperineal resection cases. Conclusion : Our retrospective study showed that postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy could improve the pelvic control in MAC C2+3 group. To improve both pelvic control and survival in all patients with MAC B2 or more, other treatment modality such as concurrent continuous infusion of 5-FU, which is the most standard agent, with radiotherapy should be considered.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.3-49
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• 2014

Growing interest of stakeholders on corporate responsibilities for environment and tightening environmental regulations are highlighting the importance of environmental management more than ever. However, companies' awareness of the importance of environment is still falling behind, and related academic works have not shown consistent conclusions on the relationship between environmental performance and economic performance. One of the reasons is different ways of measuring these two performances. The evaluation scope of economic performance is relatively narrow and the performance can be measured by a unified unit such as price, while the scope of environmental performance is diverse and a wide range of units are used for measuring environmental performances instead of using a single unified unit. Therefore, the results of works can be different depending on the performance indicators selected. In order to resolve this problem, generalized and standardized performance indicators should be developed. In particular, the performance indicators should be able to cover the concepts of both environmental and economic performances because the recent idea of environmental management has expanded to encompass the concept of sustainability. Another reason is that most of the current researches tend to focus on the motive of environmental investments and environmental performance, and do not offer a guideline for an effective implementation strategy for environmental management. For example, a process improvement strategy or a market discrimination strategy can be deployed through comparing the environment competitiveness among the companies in the same or similar industries, so that a virtuous cyclical relationship between environmental and economic performances can be secured. A novel method for measuring eco-efficiency by utilizing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is able to combine multiple environmental and economic performances, is proposed in this report. Based on the eco-efficiencies, the environmental competitiveness is analyzed and the optimal combination of inputs and outputs are recommended for improving the eco-efficiencies of inefficient firms. Furthermore, the panel analysis is applied to the causal relationship between eco-efficiency and economic performance, and the pooled regression model is used to investigate the relationship between eco-efficiency and economic performance. The four-year eco-efficiencies between 2010 and 2013 of 23 companies are obtained from the DEA analysis; a comparison of efficiencies among 23 companies is carried out in terms of technical efficiency(TE), pure technical efficiency(PTE) and scale efficiency(SE), and then a set of recommendations for optimal combination of inputs and outputs are suggested for the inefficient companies. Furthermore, the experimental results with the panel analysis have demonstrated the causality from eco-efficiency to economic performance. The results of the pooled regression have shown that eco-efficiency positively affect financial perform ances(ROA and ROS) of the companies, as well as firm values(Tobin Q, stock price, and stock returns). This report proposes a novel approach for generating standardized performance indicators obtained from multiple environmental and economic performances, so that it is able to enhance the generality of relevant researches and provide a deep insight into the sustainability of environmental management. Furthermore, using efficiency indicators obtained from the DEA model, the cause of change in eco-efficiency can be investigated and an effective strategy for environmental management can be suggested. Finally, this report can be a motive for environmental management by providing empirical evidence that environmental investments can improve economic performance.

• Journal of Periodontal and Implant Science
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• v.37 no.sup2
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• pp.427-445
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• 2007

To improve osseointegration at the boneto-implant interface, several studies have been carried out to modify titanium surface. Variations in surface texture or microtopography may affect the cellular response to an implant. Osteoblast-like cells attach more readily to a rougher titanium surface, and synthesis of extracellular matrix and subsequent mineralization were found to be enhanced on rough or porous coated titanium. However, regarding the effect of roughened surface by physical and mechanical methods, most studies carried out on the reactions of cells to micrometric topography, little work has been performed on the reaction of cells to nanotopography. The purpose of this study was to examme the response of osteoblast-like cell cultured on blasted surfaces and alkali treated surfaces, and to evaluate the influence of surface texture or submicro-scaled surface topography on the cell attachment, cell proliferation and the gene expression of osteoblastic phenotype using ROS 17/2.8 cell lines. In scanning electron micrographs, the blasted, alkali treated and machined surfaces demonstrated microscopic differences in the surface topography. The specimens of alkali treatment had a submicro-scaled porous sur-face with pore size about 200 nm. The blasted surfaces showed irregularities in morphology with small(<10 ${\mu}m$) depression and indentation among flatter-appearing areas of various sizes. Based on profilometry, the blasted surfaces was significantly rougher than the machined and the alkali treated surfaces (p$TiO_2$) were observed on alkali treated surfaces, whereas not observed on machined and blasted surfaces. The attachment morphology of cells according to time was observed by the scanning electron microscope. After 1 hour incubation, the cells were in the process of adhesion and spreading on the prepared surfaces. After 3 hours, the cells on all prepared surfaces were further spreaded and flattened, however on the blasted and alkali treated surfaces, the cells exhibited slightly irregular shapes and some gaps or spaces were seen. After 24 hours incubation, most cells of the all groups had a flattened and polygonal shape, but the cells were more spreaded on the machined surfaces than the blasted and alkali treated surfaces. The MTT assay indicated the increase on machined, alkali treated and blasted surfaces according to time, and the alkali treated and blasted surfaces showed significantly increased in optical density comparing with machined surfaces at 1 day (p<0.01). Gene expression study showed that mRNA expression level of ${\alpha}\;1(I)$ collagen, alkaline phosphatase and osteopontin of the osteoblast-like cells showed a tendency to be higher on blasted and alkali treated surfaces than on the machined surfaces, although no siginificant difference in the mRNA expression level of ${\alpha}\;1(I)$ collagen, alkaline phosphatase and osteopontin was observed among all groups. In conclusion, we suggest that submicroscaled surfaces on osteoblast-like cell response do not over-ride the one of the surface with micro-scaled topography produced by blasting method, although the microscaled and submicro-scaled surfaces can accelerate osteogenic cell attachment and function compared with the machined surfaces.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.127-146
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• 2017

Services using artificial intelligence have begun to emerge in daily life. Artificial intelligence is applied to products in consumer electronics and communications such as artificial intelligence refrigerators and speakers. In the financial sector, using Kensho's artificial intelligence technology, the process of the stock trading system in Goldman Sachs was improved. For example, two stock traders could handle the work of 600 stock traders and the analytical work for 15 people for 4weeks could be processed in 5 minutes. Especially, big data analysis through machine learning among artificial intelligence fields is actively applied throughout the financial industry. The stock market analysis and investment modeling through machine learning theory are also actively studied. The limits of linearity problem existing in financial time series studies are overcome by using machine learning theory such as artificial intelligence prediction model. The study of quantitative financial data based on the past stock market-related numerical data is widely performed using artificial intelligence to forecast future movements of stock price or indices. Various other studies have been conducted to predict the future direction of the market or the stock price of companies by learning based on a large amount of text data such as various news and comments related to the stock market. Investing on commodity asset, one of alternative assets, is usually used for enhancing the stability and safety of traditional stock and bond asset portfolio. There are relatively few researches on the investment model about commodity asset than mainstream assets like equity and bond. Recently machine learning techniques are widely applied on financial world, especially on stock and bond investment model and it makes better trading model on this field and makes the change on the whole financial area. In this study we made investment model using Support Vector Machine among the machine learning models. There are some researches on commodity asset focusing on the price prediction of the specific commodity but it is hard to find the researches about investment model of commodity as asset allocation using machine learning model. We propose a method of forecasting four major commodity indices, portfolio made of commodity futures, and individual commodity futures, using SVM model. The four major commodity indices are Goldman Sachs Commodity Index(GSCI), Dow Jones UBS Commodity Index(DJUI), Thomson Reuters/Core Commodity CRB Index(TRCI), and Rogers International Commodity Index(RI). We selected each two individual futures among three sectors as energy, agriculture, and metals that are actively traded on CME market and have enough liquidity. They are Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Corn, Wheat, Gold and Silver Futures. We made the equally weighted portfolio with six commodity futures for comparing with other commodity indices. We set the 19 macroeconomic indicators including stock market indices, exports & imports trade data, labor market data, and composite leading indicators as the input data of the model because commodity asset is very closely related with the macroeconomic activities. They are 14 US economic indicators, two Chinese economic indicators and two Korean economic indicators. Data period is from January 1990 to May 2017. We set the former 195 monthly data as training data and the latter 125 monthly data as test data. In this study, we verified that the performance of the equally weighted commodity futures portfolio rebalanced by the SVM model is better than that of other commodity indices. The prediction accuracy of the model for the commodity indices does not exceed 50% regardless of the SVM kernel function. On the other hand, the prediction accuracy of equally weighted commodity futures portfolio is 53%. The prediction accuracy of the individual commodity futures model is better than that of commodity indices model especially in agriculture and metal sectors. The individual commodity futures portfolio excluding the energy sector has outperformed the three sectors covered by individual commodity futures portfolio. In order to verify the validity of the model, it is judged that the analysis results should be similar despite variations in data period. So we also examined the odd numbered year data as training data and the even numbered year data as test data and we confirmed that the analysis results are similar. As a result, when we allocate commodity assets to traditional portfolio composed of stock, bond, and cash, we can get more effective investment performance not by investing commodity indices but by investing commodity futures. Especially we can get better performance by rebalanced commodity futures portfolio designed by SVM model.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-36
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• 2012

Service failure is one of the major reasons for customer defection. As the business environment gets tougher and more competitive, a single service failure might bring about fatal consequences to a service provider or a firm. Sometimes a failure won't end up with an unsatisfied customer's simple complaining but with a wide-spread animosity against the service provider or the firm, leading to a threat to the firm's survival itself in the society. Therefore, we are in need of comprehensive understandings of complainants' attitudes and behaviors toward service failures and firm's recovery efforts. Even though a failure itself couldn't be fixed completely, marketers should repair the mind and heart of unsatisfied customers, which can be regarded as an successful recovery strategy in the end. As the outcome of recovery efforts exerted by service providers or firms, recovery of the relationship between customer and service provider need to put on the top in the recovery goal list. With these motivations, the study investigates how service failure and recovery makes the changes in dynamics of fundamental elements of customer-firm relationship, such as customer affection, customer trust and loyalty intention by comparing two time points, before the service failure and after the recovery, focusing on the effects of recovery satisfaction and the failure severity. We adopted La & Choi (2012)'s framework for development of the research model that was based on the previous research stream like Yim et al. (2008) and Thomson et al. (2005). The pivotal background theories of the model are mainly from relationship marketing and social relationships of social psychology. For example, Love, Emotional attachment, Intimacy, and Equity theories regarding human relationships were reviewed. As the results, when recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust that were established before the service failure are carried over to the future after the recovery. However, when recovery satisfaction is low, customer-firm relationship that had already established in the past are not carried over but broken up. Regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, once a failure occurs loyalty intention is not carried over to the future and the impact of customer trust on loyalty intention becomes stronger. Such changes imply that customers become more prudent and more risk-aversive than the time prior to service failure. The impact of severity of failure on customer affection and customer trust matters only when recovery satisfaction is low. When recovery satisfaction is high, customer affection and customer trust become severity-proof. Interestingly, regardless of the degree of recovery satisfaction, failure severity has a significant negative influence on loyalty intention. Loyalty intention is the most fragile target when a service failure occurs no matter how severe the failure criticality is. Consequently, the ultimate goal of service recovery should be the restoration of customer-firm relationship and recovery of customer trust should be the primary objective to accomplish for a successful recovery performance. Especially when failure severity is high, service recovery should be perceived highly satisfied by the complainants because failure severity matters more when recovery satisfaction is low. Marketers can implement recovery strategies to enhance emotional appeals as well as fair treatments since the both impacts of affection and trust on loyalty intention are significant. In the case of high severity of failure, recovery efforts should be exerted to overreach customer expectation, designed to directly repair customer trust and elaborately designed in the focus of customer-firm communications during the interactional recovery process to affect customer trust rebuilding indirectly. Because it is a longer and harder way to rebuild customer-firm relationship for high severity cases, low recovery satisfaction cannot guarantee customer retention. To prevent customer defection due to service failure of high severity, unexpected rewards as a recovery will be likely to be useful since those will lead to customer delight or customer gratitude toward the service firm. Based on the results of analyses, theoretical and managerial implications are presented. Limitations and future research ideas are also discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.141-177
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• 2011

I. Research Objectives: Most of the previous studies on diffusion have concentrated on efficacy of WOM communication with the use of variables at individual level (Iacobucci 1996; Midgley et al. 1992). However, there is a paucity of studies which investigated network's structural properties as antecedents of WOM from the perspective of consumers' sociocultural propensities. Against this research backbone, this study attempted to link the network's structural properties and consumer' WOM behavior on cross-national basis. The major research objective of this study was to examine the relationship between network properties and WOM by comparing Korean and Chinese consumers. Specific objectives of this research are threefold; firstly, it sought to examine whether network properties (i.e., tie strength, centrality, range) affect WOM (WOM intention and quality of WOM). Secondly, it aimed to explore the moderating effects of cutural orientation (uncertainty avoidance and individuality) on the relationship between network properties and WOM. Thirdly, it substantiates the role of innovativeness as antecedents to both network properties and WOM. II. Research Hypotheses: Based on the above research objectives, the study put forth the following research hypotheses to validate. ${\cdot}$ H 1-1 : The Strength of tie between two counterparts within network will positively influence WOM effectivenes ${\cdot}$ H 1-2 : The network centrality will positively influence the WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 1-3 : The network range will positively influence the WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 2-1 : The consumer's uncertainty avoidance tendency will moderate the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 2-2 : The consumer's individualism tendency will moderate the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness ${\cdot}$ H 3-1 : The consumer's innovativeness will positively influence the social network properties ${\cdot}$ H 3-2 : The consumer's innovativeness will positively influence WOM effectiveness III. Methodology: Through a pilot study and back-translation, two versions of questionnaire were prepared, one in Korean and the other in Chinese. The chinese data were collected from the chinese students enrolled in language schools in Suwon city in Korea, while Korean data were collected from students taking classes in a major university in Seoul. A total of 277 questionnaire were used for analysis of Korean data and 212 for Chinese data. The reason why Chinese students living in Korea rather than in China were selected was based on two factors: one was to neutralize the differences (ie, retail channel availability) that may arise from living in separate countries and the second was to minimize the difference in communication venues such as internet accessibility and cell phone usability. SPSS 12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used for analysis. IV. Results: Prior to hypothesis verification, mean differences between the two countries in terms of major constructs were performed with the following result; As for network properties (tie strength, centrality and range), Koreans showed higher scores in all three constructs. For cultural orientation traits, Koreans scored higher only on uncertainty avoidance trait than Chinese. As a result of verifying the first research objective, confirming the relationship between network properties and WOM effectiveness, on Korean side, tie strength(Beta=.116; t=1.785) and centrality (Beta=.499; t=6.776) significantly influenced on WOM intention, and similar finding was obtained for Chinese side, with tie strength (Beta=.246; t=3.544) and centrality (Beta=.247; t=3.538) being significant. However, with regard to WOM argument quality, Korean data yielded only centrality (Beta=.82; t=7.600) having a significant impact on WOM, whereas China showed both tie strength(Beat=.142; t=2.052) and centrality(Beta=.348; t=5.031) being influential. To answer for the second research objective addressing the moderating role of cultural orientation, moderated regression anaylsis was performed and the result showed that uncertainty avoidance moderated between network range and WOM intention for both Korea and China, But for Korea, the uncertainty avoidance moderated between tie strength and WOM quality, while for China it moderated between network range and WOM intention. And innovativeness moderated between tie strength and WOM intention for Korea but it moderated between network range and WOM intention for China. As a result of analysing for third research objective, we found that for Korea, innovativeness positively influenced centrality only (Beta=.546; t=10.808), while for China it influenced both tie strength (Beta=.203; t=2.998) and centrality(Beta=.518; t=8.782). But for both countries alike, the innovativeness influenced positively on WOM (WOM intention and WOM quality). V. Implications: The study yields the two practical implications. Firstly, the result suggests that companies targeting multinational customers need to identify segments which are susceptible to the positive WOM and WOM information based on individual traits such as uncertainty avoidance and individualism and based on that, develop marketing communication strategy. Secondly, the companies need to divide the market on Roger's five innovation stages and based on this information, enforce marketing strategy which utilizes social networking tools such as public media and WOM. For instance, innovator and early adopters, if provided with new product information, will be able to capitalize upon the network advantages and thus add informational value to network operations using SNS or corporate blog.