(1) For the purposes of this Act,
1. ʻtransactional decisionʼ means any decision taken by a consumer or other market participant concerning whether, how and on what terms he, she or it intends to conclude a transaction, to make payment for, retain or dispose of goods or services, or to exercise a contractual right in relation to goods or services, irrespective of whether the consumer or other market participant decides to act;
2. ‘commercial practice’ means any conduct by a person for the benefit of that person’s or a third party’s business before, during or after the conclusion of a business transaction, which conduct is directly and objectively connected with promoting the sale or the procurement of goods or services, or with the conclusion or the performance of a contract concerning goods or services; ‘goods’ is also deemed to include immovable property and digital content, ‘services’ digital services and rights and obligations;
3. ‘market participant’ means, in addition to competitors and consumers, any person who supplies or demands goods or services;
4. ‘competitor’ means any person who has a concrete competitive relationship with one or more entrepreneurs supplying or demanding goods or services;
5. ‘communication’ means any information which is exchanged or passed between a finite number of participants via a publicly accessible electronic communications service; this does not include information which is passed on to the public as part of a broadcasting service via an electronic communications network, insofar as such information cannot be linked with an identifiable participant or user receiving it;
6. ʻonline marketplaceʼ means a service which allows consumers to conclude distance contracts (section 312c of the Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch)) with other entrepreneurs or consumers using software operated by an entrepreneur or in that entrepreneur’s name, including a website, part of a website or an application;
7. ʻrankingʼ means the relative prominence given to goods or services by an entrepreneur, irrespective of the technical means used therefor;
8. ‘entrepreneur’ means any natural or legal person engaging in commercial practices within the framework of his, her or its trade, business, craft or profession and anyone acting in the name of, or on behalf of, such person;
9. ‘professional diligence’ means the standard of special skill and care towards consumers to which an entrepreneur can reasonably be expected to conform, commensurate with honest market practices and the principle of good faith, in the entrepreneur’s field of activity;
10. ‘code of conduct’ means any agreement or set of rules which defines the behaviour of entrepreneurs who have undertaken to be bound by the code in relation to business sectors or individual commercial practices without such obligations having been imposed by statutory or administrative provisions;
11. ‘to materially distort the economic behaviour of consumers’ means to engage in a commercial practice to appreciably impair a consumer’s ability to take an informed decision, thereby causing the consumer to take a transactional decision which he or she would not have taken otherwise.
(2) Section 13 of the Civil Code applies accordingly to the term ‘consumer’.