consumer

noun · Verbraucher

A Verbraucher is any natural person concluding a transaction for purposes predominantly outside their trade, business or self-employed professional activity, § 13 BGB. Two things follow that English readers miss: a company can never be one, however small, and the word predominantly decides mixed-purpose cases, with the courts starting from the assumption that a natural person acts as a consumer.

Which translation, when

Verbraucherthe definition: § 13 BGB names every natural person who concludes a legal transaction for purposes which can predominantly be attributed neither to their commercial nor to their independent professional activity; the counterpart is the Unternehmer of § 14 BGB, and the status is decided transaction by transaction, so the same person buys as a consumer in the evening and as a trader in the morning.

überwiegendthe mixed-purpose test: the statute asks what the purposes predominantly are, so a laptop bought mainly for private use stays a consumer purchase although it is occasionally used for work; the negative wording of § 13 BGB has led the Bundesgerichtshof to treat the transactions of a natural person as consumer transactions in principle, leaving the trader to show clear and unambiguous circumstances to the contrary, so doubt resolves in favour of consumer status.

was daran hängtthe consequences: consumer status opens the withdrawal regime, the protective rules of the consumer sale and the stricter half of the standard-terms review, which is why a contract that misclassifies the parties usually fails at exactly that point; legal persons stand outside § 13 entirely, and the label a form uses, business customer or a ticked box, does not create the status.

Why

Consumer translates as Verbraucher, and the German definition is tighter than the English word. Under § 13 BGB a Verbraucher is any natural person who concludes a legal transaction for purposes which can predominantly be attributed neither to their commercial nor to their independent professional activity. Three features of that sentence matter for translation. It covers only natural persons, so a company, an association or a foundation is never a consumer in German law, however small the business and however private the purchase feels; English usage, by contrast, sometimes speaks of consumers loosely for small customers. It works transaction by transaction rather than as a permanent status, so the same person acts as a Verbraucher when buying a washing machine and as an Unternehmer when ordering supplies for the practice. And it turns on the word predominantly, which decides mixed-purpose cases: a purchase mainly private stays a consumer purchase although the item is sometimes used professionally. Because the provision is worded negatively, the Bundesgerichtshof takes the transactions of a natural person to be consumer transactions in principle, leaving the other side to establish clear and unambiguous circumstances against it, so doubt is resolved in favour of the consumer. What hangs on the classification is considerable: the withdrawal regime, the mandatory rules of the consumer sale and the stricter branch of the standard-terms review all attach to it, and neither a heading calling the customer a business nor a ticked box in the order process creates a status the facts do not support.

Typical mistakes

Only natural persons can be consumers under § 13 BGB, so calling a small company a Verbraucher misstates the status and the protection that follows.
The status is decided per transaction and by predominant purpose, so treating it as a permanent attribute of a person misreads the provision.
A contractual label or a ticked box does not create trader status, so drafting that relies on it leaves the consumer rules in place.

What matters

Classifying the parties before translating a contract: the German text should use Verbraucher only for natural persons acting predominantly outside their trade, and Unternehmer for the other side, since the whole protective regime hangs on that pair.

Authority

§ 13 BGB
§ 14 BGB

What the machine misses

The engine renders consumer as Konsument or Endverbraucher, words of marketing rather than of the code, and the legal term is the Verbraucher of § 13 BGB, a natural person acting predominantly outside trade or profession; the marketing words also blur that a company can never qualify and that the status is decided transaction by transaction.

See what the machine does with this clause →

Examples

a contract between a trader and a consumer	ein Vertrag zwischen einem Unternehmer und einem Verbraucher
acting as a consumer	als Verbraucher handelnd
for purposes outside his trade	zu Zwecken außerhalb seiner gewerblichen Tätigkeit
consumer contract	Verbrauchervertrag

More notes on these sections

trader Unternehmer