The joint business of commercial travelers(CT) and grey goods retailers(GGR) has been a very intriguing yet seldom studied phenomenon. This study intends to explore the social words of these people. Four research questions served as the guideline for the study: 1. What are the major features and dynamics of the CTs and CGRs in operation? 2.What are the main characters of this joint business that make it persist all these years? 3. What do the social networks of CTs and GGRs look like? And how do these social networks work? 4. To these days, when the business’ niche keeps shrinking, why do these people still hang around and keep running it?

The major findings are as the follows: Firstly. the CTs consist of a group mainly of aged women travelling between Taiwan and Naha, Japan. They personally bring with them goods from Taiwan for certain Japanese retailers in Nah and then purchases goods from Naha and bring them back for Taiwanese GGRs. One or two hostels in Naha serve as their social bases for the operation and the CTs maintain their own more or less stable networks at both ends of the travel. 2. A high degree of closure is found among the social circle of the CTs. Each individual CT has to create and maintain her/his own ego-network of buying and selling. The relatively high degree of trust is necessary to keep the network stable and intact. And the knowledge of that network seems to be esoteric for others. In comparison, all the GGRs keep their own networks, too, however with much less closure and esoteric. The CTs are highly dependent on their ego-networks for their income, whereas the GGRs rely more on other capabilities, e.g. their economic forces to keep a physical shop, social skills to deal with all others and cultural capitals to persuade the customers, etc..

Thirdly, within the social circles of CTs and GGRs, strong and close relationships are always found. The closeness and intimacy among co-works of the same business has superseded those of their families’ in many cases. Of them, the parent-child relation is often reported as the most regrettable one for both CTs and GGRs. Fourthly, This joint business has been hit hard by recent economic globalization. The profit rate keeps diminishing to the point of barely keeping the account books balanced. However, many CTs and GGRs strive to keep their business running. It seems that the importance of the social network itself has exceeded other more material considerations.

In other words, the importance of mutual trust and interpersonal emotional support of the relations have been outgrown their instrumentality. In the past years whence the profitability was high, trust and emotional support soothed the business operations from which high material rewards were generated. However, even when the profits were taken out completely, the emotionality of the relations itself is deemed significant enough for the CTs and GGRs to keep this joint business running.