This study aims to reveal a new mechanism that leads to domestic production expanded by overseas production expansion through the case of SMEs which have fixed business relationship with large companies. In previous research, two types of conversion behavior; induced conversion behavior and spontaneous conversion behavior, were discussed (Amano, 2000). However, there has been no discussion about the conversion behavior that can be taken by companies with few management resources and thus having difficulty with new customer acquisition. Therefore, we conducted a case study on the B to B SMEs that have fixed business relationship with particular large companies. The result revealed the mechanism of customer follow-up conversion behavior.

Ferlie, Fitzgerald, Wood, and Hawkins (2005) focused on the health care organization as one of the professional organizations, and conducted research on 8 innovation cases. As a result, they found the reason why innovations cannot spread in a professional organization: there are social boundaries and cognitive boundaries between professionals and the community of practice that they have made. In addition, innovations sometimes cannot cross the boundaries. Ferlie et al. (2005) has strong influence on subsequent researches, though in fact there are issues which are yet to be explained or could be explained differently. These leads to further studies. Besides, although Ferlie et al. (2005) did very well in comparing cases while carrying out qualitative studies, there are still defective factors in their case study.