Desk Research vs Fieldwork: How Do You Tell Them Apart?
Desk research reaches for the same easy-to-find secondary sources everyone else cites, while fieldwork surfaces the anomalies, like a shop that should have closed and has not, that no dataset records.
Most reports on this market were written from a desk in another country. Ours was walked, shop by shop, over three years. The difference is not a matter of effort alone. It changes what the report can actually see.
What Is the Signature of Desk Research?
Desk research reaches for the same handful of secondary sources everyone else cites, because those are the sources that are easy to reach. It therefore tends to arrive at the same tidy conclusions as everyone else, and to inherit the same blind spots. When several reports agree suspiciously closely, they are often drinking from the same well.
What Does Fieldwork Catch That Desk Research Misses?
Fieldwork keeps surprising you, and the surprises are the point. The shop that should have closed and has not. The farm selling below its own cost. The pattern that no dataset recorded, because no dataset for it exists. Those anomalies are where the real market reveals itself.
We built the report that the incumbents cannot, not because they lack skill, but because they were not here.
Desk research reaches for the same handful of easy-to-reach secondary sources and tends to arrive at the same tidy conclusions. Several reports agreeing suspiciously closely is often a sign they are drinking from the same well.
The anomalies: the shop that should have closed and has not, the farm selling below its own cost, and the patterns no dataset recorded because no dataset for them exists.
It was walked, shop by shop, over three years, not written from a desk in another country.
It changes what the report can actually see, which is why fieldwork reveals what desk research, built from the same secondary sources everyone else cites, tends to miss.
This post gives you the argument. The full method, the figures, and the confidence ratings behind them are in the report. Read a free sample chapter, then decide.
Read the free sample →Three findings from the 2026 edition, free.
Of 8,636 expired dispensary licences, 1,339 renewed. The rest did not bother. That is not a market collapsing. That is a market taking out its own trash.
CertainFewer shops, higher revenue each. The closures removed storefronts, not revenue, because the shops that closed were earning almost nothing. Every desk model read the count and stopped.
LikelyA small minority of shops earn a disproportionate share of all revenue. The bottom half earns a fraction of it. Nobody else has measured this.
LikelyBuilt from 850+ dispensary visits across Thailand, 100+ dispensary owner and operator interviews, 30+ farm owner and operator interviews, and 400+ customer interviews across 40 nationalities. 101 pages. 23 chapters. Every chapter sourced, every figure confidence-tagged.