Will you build it if they come?

I find myself a bit annoyed of late at the misuse of the Internet as a testing ground in a manner that seem ethically questionable.     Specifically, I'm reflecting on the "empty playground" practice - not in the sense that a company creates a service that customers have yet to adopt, but in the instances in which a company creates the appearance of a service that it does not intend to create unless and until people start showing up.

That is to say that it is very expensive to provide a service or a product, and sensitivity to risk has led at least one firm I'm aware of to create a fake storefront that offers no value, with the intent of building out the business behind it only if people who are given the impression that it already exists show up for service.

In the brick-and-mortar world, this is somewhat similar to putting up a "coming soon" sign for a restaurant that might be opened, eventually - though it is not quite so superficial or so innocent when the business owner goes to further lengths to deceive customers into believing a restaurant actually exists: a sign is hung that says "now open," the dining room is furnished and there are a staff of waiters - but when you approach the maitre d'is he tells you they are not open for business yet, but if you give him your name and number he'll call you when it is.

In the real world, such a shenanigan would be prohibitively expensive, but online, a site can very easily be faked-up to tally the number of people who show up, assemble a cart full of items, enter their contact information, and only afterward learn that they cannot buy anything yet, because the vendor wants to see how many people come in and what items they assemble before he makes the decision to launch a real site.

It is still wasteful to do so, even though it wastes less money, but it's worse in that it does serious damage to a brand: the people who are tricked into "shopping" the site have had a rather nasty surprise, and are unlikely to return when it's open for business.  They will likely warn their friends to stay away, and as word of the deception spreads online, fewer people will visit or will show much interest when and if it opens for real.

Up to the point that personal information is collected under the premise of making an actual purchase, it's simply a waste of time and money and a betrayal of trust.  At worst, visitors have wasted their time and gone away with a bad taste in their mouths.   At the point personal information is collected, it crosses a very definite ethical line, possibly a legal one.

When a company wishes to do market research, it should do so openly.  Survey customers to see if they would be interested, or inviting them to participate in an ethnographic study that involves them shopping at a prototype that they know is not operational.   Even if the results are tainted by their knowledge that it's an experiment, it's worthwhile to take on that margin of error for the sake of ethics.