A commercial customer or entrepreneur is a natural or legal person or a partnership with legal capacity who, when concluding a legal transaction, acts in the exercise of his commercial or independent professional activity (cf. Section 14 of the German Civil Code - BGB). The term natural persons also includes freelancers, craftsmen, farmers and small traders. A legal person is, for example, a public limited company (AG), a limited partnership (KG), a cooperative or a limited liability company (GmbH). Commercial or professional in this sense is any activity that is intended to generate income on a permanent basis.
Private person / consumer
A private person or consumer is any natural person who concludes a legal transaction for purposes which are predominantly attributed neither to his commercial nor to his independent professional activity (cf. Section 13 of the German Civil Code - BGB). A private person or consumer is a natural person who purchases one or more goods or services for his own private satisfaction of needs. Consumers are thus in contrast to commercial customers or business enterprises, who buy goods in order to process them, further process them and subsequently sell or trade them.