The FTC’s pricing inquiry should explain what changes when the customer changes.

A price can change because the product changed. It can also change because the seller thinks it knows something about the buyer.

The Federal Trade Commission is asking companies to help establish where that distinction applies. Its new information orders cover nine businesses across retail, airlines, rides and delivery. The agency is examining pricing and worker compensation, with responses due 45 days after recipients receive the orders.

This is a study. It is not a verdict.

That restraint should not make the questions smaller. It should make the eventual answers more useful.

A customer can compare two posted prices. It is harder to evaluate an offer when the relevant comparison is hidden: what would someone else have been shown for the same transaction, at the same time, under the same conditions?

The same problem can arise on the other side of the purchase. A worker considering an offer needs to understand the job. If information about that worker also changes the offer, the distinction should not disappear inside an explanation that everything is simply an algorithm.

I want the inquiry to separate those categories clearly.

Demand, available inventory and the work involved can be relevant commercial factors. Information used to estimate an individual’s willingness to pay is a different kind of input. Neither category should be treated as interchangeable merely because both can be processed by software.

The companies’ responses deserve attention too. Associated Press reports that Delta and JetBlue deny setting individualized fares from personal information. Instacart says shopper compensation uses job criteria and that retailers set its product prices.

Those are positions to examine against the requested records. They are not reasons to presume guilt, and they do not remove the value of an independent account of how the systems work.

There is a public accountability test here that reaches beyond a dramatic finding.

Can the agency explain which information matters, where it comes from and which decisions it can affect? Can the findings distinguish a documented practice from a theoretical capability? Can people understand the consequences without first becoming software specialists?

A report that merely says companies collect data would leave the central question unresolved.

Collection is one event. Using information to change the terms offered to a person is another.

The most useful result would make that movement visible. It would show how an input becomes a commercial decision and where the company’s explanation fits the evidence.

Until then, the inquiry should remain an inquiry.

Afterward, the public should receive more than another assurance that the systems are complicated.