• Journal of Korean Medicine for Obesity Research
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.52-68
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• 2020

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate the weight loss effects of auricular acupuncture in obese patients. Methods: Six databases (Research Information Sharing Service [RISS], Korean studies Information Service System [KISS], Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System [OASIS], PubMed, The Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI]) were searched up to May 20, 2020. Eight eligible randomized controlled trials were included the present study. The quality of included studies was assessed by the Cochrane risk of bias tool and a meta-analysis was performed by Review Manager software. A meta-analysis was conducted using a random-effects model and a subgroup analysis was performed to detect the sources of heterogeneity, identify the selection of acupuncture methods and explore its contributions to the weight loss effects. Results: Among 8 trials, 5 trials used auricular acupuncture and 2 trials used auricular acupressure, 1 trial used both types of intervention. Most commonly selected acupoints were Shenmen (TF4) and stomach (CO4). Treatment duration was six to twelve weeks, and total treatment session was six to twelve. Compared to the control groups, auricular acupuncture significantly decreased body weight, body mass index (BMI), high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL) and ghrelin. For the selection of acupuncture methods, both methods performed similarly in most outcome except waist circumference (WC), body fat percentage (BFP), and triglycerides (TG). Conclusions: We found that auricular acupuncture can be effective for weight loss and controlling appetite. However, the findings should be interpreted with caution due to heterogeneity. So further vigorous and well-designed studies should be conducted to strengthen the evidence of the use of auricular acupuncture for obesity.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.219-230
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• 2010

Digital content makes big changes to our daily lives while bringing opportunities and challenges for companies. Creative firms integrate pictures, texts, videos, audios, and data by digitalization to develop new products or services and create digital experiences to promote their brands. Most articles on digital content contribute to the basic concept or development of marketing it in literature. Actually, compared with traditional value chains for common products or services, the digital content industry seems to have more potential value. Because quite a bit of digital content is free to the consumer, price is not necessarily perceived as an indicator of the quality or value of information (Rowley 2008). It becomes evident that a current theme in digital content is the issue of "value," and research on customers' perceived value of digital content is a necessity. This article argues that experiential value has an advantage in customers' evaluations of digital content. Two different but related contributions to the understanding of "value" of digital content are made here. First, based on the comparison of digital content with products and services, the article proposes two key characteristics that make experiential strategy available for digital content: intangibility and near-zero reproduction cost. On top of that, based on the discussion of the gap between company's idealized value and customer's perceived value, this article emphasizes that digital content prices and pricing of digital content is different from products and services. As a result of intangibility, prices may not reflect customer value. Moreover, the cost of digital content in the development stage may be very high while reproduction costs shrink dramatically. Moreover, because of the value gap mentioned before, the pricing polices vary for different digital contents. For example, flat price policy is generally used for movies and music (Magiera 2001; Netherby 2002), while for continuous demand, digital content such as online games and anti-virus programs involves a more complicated matter of utility and competitive price levels. Digital content companies have to explore various kinds of strategies to overcome this gap. Rethinking marketing solutions such as advertisements, images, and word-of-mouth and their effect on customers' perceived value becomes essential. China's digital content industry is becoming more and more globalized and drawing special attention from different countries and regions that have respective competitive advantages. The 2008-2009 Annual Report on the Development of China's Digital Content Industry (CCIDConsulting 2009) indicates that, with the driven power of domestic demand and governmental policy support, the country's digital content industry maintained a fast growth of some 30 percent in 2008, obviously indicating the initial stage of industry expansion. In China, anti-virus programs and other software programs which need to be updated use a quarter-based pricing policy. Customers can download a trial version for free and use it for six months or a year. If they want to use it longer, continuous payment is needed. They examine the excellence of the digital content during this trial period and decide whether to pay for continued usage. For China’s music and movie industries, as a result of initial development, experiential strategy has not been much applied, even though firms in other countries find the trial experience and explore important strategies(such as customers listening to music for several seconds for free before downloading it). For the above reasons, anti-virus program may be a representative for digital content industry in China and an exploratory study of the advantage of experiential value in customer's perceived value of digital content is done in the anti-virus market of China. In order to enhance the reliability of the survey data, this study focused on people who were experienced users of anti-virus programs. The empirical results revealed that experiential value has a positive effect on customers' perceived value of digital content. In other words, because digital content is intangible and the reproduction costs are nearly zero, customers' evaluations are based heavily on their experience. Moreover, image and word-of-mouth do not have a positive effect on perceived value, only on experiential value. That is to say, a digital content value chain is different from that of a general product or service. Experiential value has a notable advantage and mediates the effect of image and word-of-mouth on perceived value. The results of this study help provide an understanding of why free digital content downloads exist in developing countries. Customers can perceive the value of digital content only by using and experiencing it. This is also why such governments support the development of digital content. Other developing countries whose digital content business is also in the beginning stage can make use of the suggestions here. Moreover, based on the advantage of experiential strategy, companies should make more of an effort to invest in customers' experience. As a result of the characteristics and value gap of digital content, customers perceive more value in the intangible digital content only by experiencing what they really want. Moreover, because of the near-zero reproduction costs, companies can perhaps use experiential strategy to enhance customer understanding of digital content.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.175-184
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• 2011

With a development of implant restoration technique, there are increasing use of computer-guided system for edentulous patients. It was carried out simulated operation based on CT information about patient's bone quantity, quality and anatomical landmark. However, there are some difference between the programmed implant and post-operative implant about it's position. If the deviation was severe, it could happen a failure of 'passive fit' and not suited for path of implant restoration. The aim of this presentation is to evaluate about a degree of deviations between programmed implant and post-operative implant. Five patients treated by 'NobelGuide' system (Nobel Biocare AB, G$\ddot{o}$teborg, Sweden) in Department of Prosthodontics, Inha University were included in this study. The patients were performed CT radiograph taking and intra-oral impression taking at pre-operation. Based on CT images and study model, surgical stent was produced by NobelBiocareTM. To fabricated a pre-operative study model, after connected lab analog to surgical template, accomplished a pre-operative model using type 4 dental stone. At final impression, a post-operative study model was fabricated in the conventional procedures. Each study model was performed CT radiograph taking. Based on CT images, each implant was simulated in three dimensional position using $Procera^{(R)}$ software (Procera Software Clinical Design Premium, version 1.5; Nobel Biocare AB). In 3D simulated model, length and angulation between each implant of both pre- and post-operative implants were measured and recorded about linear and angular deviation between pre-and post-operative implants. A total of 24 implants were included in this study and 58 inter-implant sites between each implant were measured about linear and angular deviations. In the linear deviation a mean deviation of 0.41 mm (range 0~1.7 mm) was reported. In the angular deviation, a mean deviation was $1.99^{\circ}$ (range $0^{\circ}{\sim}6.7^{\circ}$). It appears that the both linear and angular mean deviation value were well acceptable to application of computer-guided implant system.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.11-23
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• 2003

Objectives : The 1990s has seen advances in the conceptualization of self-perceived health status which has important roles for individual health and the quality of life. Many types of standardized questionnaires have been developed with the current wide use of SF-36, NHP, andEuroQol. However, the outcomes of these tools may be different with regard to regional, cultural and emotional backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to trial the development of a Korean Health Profile (KHP 1.0) to measure the self-perceived health stati of Koreans. Methods : The KHP 1.0 was designed on the basis of the Medical Outcome Study Form 36 (SF-36), the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), and the EuroQOL. It was composed of 9 scales; physical functioning, role limitation-physical, pain, general health, energy, social isolation, sleep, role limitation-emotional, and e-motional health. Self-reported chronic disease conditions, and the Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), were also checked for the evaluation of clinical validity. This study was conducted, from December 2000 to January 2001, on 800 middle-aged parents, with four high school students, with 100 retest sets being conducted two weeks later. From the 800 subjects there were 588 complete responses (effective response 73.5%). The reliability of the test-retest results, and the factor analysis on the validity of the KHP 1.0 components, were evaluated using the SPSS (ver 10.0) software. Results : The reliability of the KHP 1.0 was good with Cronbach's alpha (>0.6), test-retest correlation coefficients (>0.5), but with no significant differences from the paired t-test. From the psychometric validity tests, the 9 scales of the KHP 1.0 were divided into two components; physical and mental, and trimmed to the established model with 55% of the total variance, with the exception of role limitation-emotional. The clinical validity on the basis of the comparison for the four characteristic groups; healthy, physical conditions only, mental conditions only, and physical and mental conditions were also good. Conclusions : The KHP 1.0 appears to be a valid measurement tool of self-perceived health stati of Koreans, although there are limitations, i.e. sample size was too small, a limited number of middle-aged subjects, and it was based on unconfirmed diagnoses, etc. Therefore, further study is required to standardize the assessment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.45-54
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• 2005

The main purpose of this study is located at developing Ominibus Monitoring System(OMS) for the purpose of the internal management, which enable to establish job standards, find out matters to be improved, and appreciate for its treatment in a systematic way. It is through developing subjective or objective estimation tool with use of importance, perceived level, and complex index at international airport by each principal service items, The direction of this study came towards for the purpose of developing a metric analysis tool, utilizing the Quantitative Secondary Data, Analysing Perceived Data through airport user surveys, systemizing the data collection-input-analysis process, making data image according to the graph of results, planning service encounter and endowing control attribution, and ensuring competitiveness at the minimal international standards. It is much important to set up a pre-investigation plan on the base of existent foreign literature and actual inspection to international airport. Two tasks have been executed together on the base of this pre-investigation; one is developing subjective estimation standards for departing party, entering party, and airport residence and the other is developing objective standards as complementary methods. The study has processed for the monitoring services at airports regularly and irregularly through developing software system for operating standards after ensuring credibility and feasibility of estimation standards with substantial and statistical way.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.461-470
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• 2023

While speech animation generation employing deep learning has been actively researched for English, there has been no prior work for Korean. Given the fact, this paper for the very first time employs supervised deep learning to generate Korean speech animation. By doing so, we find out the significant effect of deep learning being able to make speech animation research come down to speech recognition research which is the predominating technique. Also, we study the way to make best use of the effect for Korean speech animation generation. The effect can contribute to efficiently and efficaciously revitalizing the recently inactive Korean speech animation research, by clarifying the top priority research target. This paper performs this process: (i) it chooses blendshape animation technique, (ii) implements the deep-learning model in the master-servant pipeline of the automatic speech recognition (ASR) module and the facial action coding (FAC) module, (iii) makes Korean speech facial motion capture dataset, (iv) prepares two comparison deep learning models (one model adopts the English ASR module, the other model adopts the Korean ASR module, however both models adopt the same basic structure for their FAC modules), and (v) train the FAC modules of both models dependently on their ASR modules. The user study demonstrates that the model which adopts the Korean ASR module and dependently trains its FAC module (getting 4.2/5.0 points) generates decisively much more natural Korean speech animations than the model which adopts the English ASR module and dependently trains its FAC module (getting 2.7/5.0 points). The result confirms the aforementioned effect showing that the quality of the Korean speech animation comes down to the accuracy of Korean ASR.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.127-138
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• 2011

The core service of most research portal sites is providing relevant research papers to various researchers that match their research interests. This kind of service may only be effective and easy to use when a user can provide correct and concrete information about a paper such as the title, authors, and keywords. However, unfortunately, most users of this service are not acquainted with concrete bibliographic information. It implies that most users inevitably experience repeated trial and error attempts of keyword-based search. Especially, retrieving a relevant research paper is more difficult when a user is novice in the research domain and does not know appropriate keywords. In this case, a user should perform iterative searches as follows : i) perform an initial search with an arbitrary keyword, ii) acquire related keywords from the retrieved papers, and iii) perform another search again with the acquired keywords. This usage pattern implies that the level of service quality and user satisfaction of a portal site are strongly affected by the level of keyword management and searching mechanism. To overcome this kind of inefficiency, some leading research portal sites adopt the association rule mining-based keyword recommendation service that is similar to the product recommendation of online shopping malls. However, keyword recommendation only based on association analysis has limitation that it can show only a simple and direct relationship between two keywords. In other words, the association analysis itself is unable to present the complex relationships among many keywords in some adjacent research areas. To overcome this limitation, we propose the hybrid approach for establishing association network among keywords used in research papers. The keyword association network can be established by the following phases : i) a set of keywords specified in a certain paper are regarded as co-purchased items, ii) perform association analysis for the keywords and extract frequent patterns of keywords that satisfy predefined thresholds of confidence, support, and lift, and iii) schematize the frequent keyword patterns as a network to show the core keywords of each research area and connecting keywords among two or more research areas. To estimate the practical application of our approach, we performed a simple experiment with 600 keywords. The keywords are extracted from 131 research papers published in five prominent Korean journals in 2009. In the experiment, we used the SAS Enterprise Miner for association analysis and the R software for social network analysis. As the final outcome, we presented a network diagram and a cluster dendrogram for the keyword association network. We summarized the results in Section 4 of this paper. The main contribution of our proposed approach can be found in the following aspects : i) the keyword network can provide an initial roadmap of a research area to researchers who are novice in the domain, ii) a researcher can grasp the distribution of many keywords neighboring to a certain keyword, and iii) researchers can get some idea for converging different research areas by observing connecting keywords in the keyword association network. Further studies should include the following. First, the current version of our approach does not implement a standard meta-dictionary. For practical use, homonyms, synonyms, and multilingual problems should be resolved with a standard meta-dictionary. Additionally, more clear guidelines for clustering research areas and defining core and connecting keywords should be provided. Finally, intensive experiments not only on Korean research papers but also on international papers should be performed in further studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2024

In this study, an AI-based algorithm was developed to prevent image quality deterioration and reading errors due to patient movement in PET/CT examinations that use radioisotopes in medical institutions to test cancer and other diseases. Using the Mothion Free software developed using, we checked the degree of correction of movement due to breathing, evaluated its usefulness, and conducted a study for clinical application. The experimental method was to use an RPM Phantom to inject the radioisotope 18F-FDG into a vacuum vial and a sphere of a NEMA IEC body Phantom of different sizes, and to produce images by directing the movement of the radioisotope into a moving lesion during respiration. The vacuum vial had different degrees of movement at different positions, and the spheres of the NEMA IEC body Phantom of different sizes produced different sizes of lesions. Through the acquired images, the lesion volume, maximum SUV, and average SUV were each measured to quantitatively evaluate the degree of motion correction by Motion Free. The average SUV of vacuum vial A, with a large degree of movement, was reduced by 23.36 %, and the error rate of vacuum vial B, with a small degree of movement, was reduced by 29.3 %. The average SUV error rate at the sphere 37mm and 22mm of the NEMA IEC body Phantom was reduced by 29.3 % and 26.51 %, respectively. The average error rate of the four measurements from which the error rate was calculated decreased by 30.03 %, indicating a more accurate average SUV value. In this study, only two-dimensional movements could be produced, so in order to obtain more accurate data, a Phantom that can embody the actual breathing movement of the human body was used, and if the diversity of the range of movement was configured, a more accurate evaluation of usability could be made.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.147-157
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• 2013

With the advent of the digital environment that can be accessed anytime, anywhere with the introduction of high-speed network, the free distribution and use of digital content were made possible. Ironically this environment is raising a variety of copyright infringement, and product images used in the online shopping mall are pirated frequently. There are many controversial issues whether shopping mall images are creative works or not. According to Supreme Court's decision in 2001, to ad pictures taken with ham products is simply a clone of the appearance of objects to deliver nothing but the decision was not only creative expression. But for the photographer's losses recognized in the advertising photo shoot takes the typical cost was estimated damages. According to Seoul District Court precedents in 2003, if there are the photographer's personality and creativity in the selection of the subject, the composition of the set, the direction and amount of light control, set the angle of the camera, shutter speed, shutter chance, other shooting methods for capturing, developing and printing process, the works should be protected by copyright law by the Court's sentence. In order to receive copyright protection of the shopping mall images by the law, it is simply not to convey the status of the product, the photographer's personality and creativity can be recognized that it requires effort. Accordingly, the cost of making the mall image increases, and the necessity for copyright protection becomes higher. The product images of the online shopping mall have a very unique configuration unlike the general pictures such as portraits and landscape photos and, therefore, the general image watermarking technique can not satisfy the requirements of the image watermarking. Because background of product images commonly used in shopping malls is white or black, or gray scale (gradient) color, it is difficult to utilize the space to embed a watermark and the area is very sensitive even a slight change. In this paper, the characteristics of images used in shopping malls are analyzed and a watermarking technology which is suitable to the shopping mall images is proposed. The proposed image watermarking technology divide a product image into smaller blocks, and the corresponding blocks are transformed by DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform), and then the watermark information was inserted into images using quantization of DCT coefficients. Because uniform treatment of the DCT coefficients for quantization cause visual blocking artifacts, the proposed algorithm used weighted mask which quantizes finely the coefficients located block boundaries and coarsely the coefficients located center area of the block. This mask improves subjective visual quality as well as the objective quality of the images. In addition, in order to improve the safety of the algorithm, the blocks which is embedded the watermark are randomly selected and the turbo code is used to reduce the BER when extracting the watermark. The PSNR(Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) of the shopping mall image watermarked by the proposed algorithm is 40.7~48.5[dB] and BER(Bit Error Rate) after JPEG with QF = 70 is 0. This means the watermarked image is high quality and the algorithm is robust to JPEG compression that is used generally at the online shopping malls. Also, for 40% change in size and 40 degrees of rotation, the BER is 0. In general, the shopping malls are used compressed images with QF which is higher than 90. Because the pirated image is used to replicate from original image, the proposed algorithm can identify the copyright infringement in the most cases. As shown the experimental results, the proposed algorithm is suitable to the shopping mall images with simple background. However, the future study should be carried out to enhance the robustness of the proposed algorithm because the robustness loss is occurred after mask process.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.55-80
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• 2012

I. Introduction Developing the relationships between companies is very important issue to ensure a competitive advantage in today's business environment (Bleeke & Ernst 1991; Mohr & Spekman 1994; Powell 1990). Partnerships between companies are based on having same goals, pursuing mutual understanding, and having a professional level of interdependence. By having such a partnerships and cooperative efforts between companies, they will achieve efficiency and effectiveness of their business (Mohr and Spekman, 1994). However, it is difficult to expect these ideal results only in the B2B corporate transaction. According to agency theory which is the well-accepted theory in various fields of business strategy, organization, and marketing, the two independent companies have fundamentally different corporate purposes. Also there is a higher chance of developing opportunism and conflict due to natures of human(organization), such as self-interest, bounded rationality, risk aversion, and environment factor as imbalance of information (Eisenhardt 1989). That is, especially partnerships between principal(or buyer) and agent(or supplier) of companies within supply chain, the business contract itself will not provide competitive advantage. But managing partnership between companies is the key to success. Therefore, managing partnership between manufacturer and supplier, and finding causes of conflict are essential to improve B2B performance. In conclusion, based on prior researches and Agency theory, this study will clarify how business hazards cause conflicts on supply chain and then identify how developed conflicts have been managed by two control mechanisms. II. Research model III. Method In order to validate our research model, this study gathered questionnaires from small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs). In Korea, SMEs mean the firms whose employee is under 300 and capital is under 8 billion won(about 7.2 million dollar). We asked the manufacturer's perception about the relationship with the biggest supplier, and our key informants are denied to a person responsible for buying(ex)CEO, executives, managers of purchasing department, and so on). In detail, we contact by telephone to our initial sample(about 1,200 firms) and introduce our research motivation and send our questionnaires by e-mail, mail, and direct survey. Finally we received 361 data and eliminate 32 inappropriate questionnaires. We use 329 manufactures' data on analysis. The purpose of this study is to identify the anticipant role of business hazard (environmental dynamism, asset specificity) and investigate the moderating effect of control mechanism(formal control, social control) on conflict-performance relationship. To find out moderating effect of control methods, we need to compare the regression weight between low versus. high group(about level of exercised control methods). Therefore we choose the structural equation modeling method that is proper to do multi-group analysis. The data analysis is performed by AMOS 17.0 software, and model fits are good statically (CMIN/DF=1.982, p<.000, CFI=.936, IFI=.937, RMSEA=.056). IV. Result V. Discussion Results show that the higher environmental dynamism and asset specificity(on particular supplier) buyer(manufacturer) has, the more B2B conflict exists. And this conflict affect relationship quality and financial outcomes negatively. In addition, social control and formal control could weaken the negative effect of conflict on relationship quality significantly. However, unlikely to assure conflict resolution effect of control mechanisms on relationship quality, financial outcomes are changed by neither social control nor formal control. We could explain this results with the characteristics of our sample, SMEs(Small and Medium sized Enterprises). Financial outcomes of these SMEs(manufacturer or principal) are affected by their customer(usually major company) more easily than their supplier(or agent). And, in recent few years, most of companies have suffered from financial problems because of global economic recession. It means that it is hard to evaluate the contribution of supplier(agent). Therefore we also support the suggestion of Gladstein(1984), Poppo & Zenger(2002) that relational performance variable can capture the focal outcomes of relationship(exchange) better than financial performance variable. This study has some implications that it tests the sources of conflict and investigates the effect of resolution methods of B2B conflict empirically. And, especially, it finds out the significant moderating effect of formal control which past B2B management studies have ignored in Korea.