What are Purchase?

We explain what the purchase is and what an act of sale implies. Obligations and rights of the buyer and seller.

1. What are Purchase?

The purchase refers to the action of obtaining or acquiring, in exchange for a certain price, a product or a service . But the object acquired is also considered “purchase”, once the act of acquisition is completed.

The act of purchase presumes the existence of another party, which is the one that receives the agreed price for the benefit, that is, the sale. It is obvious that each party needs the existence of the other to fulfill its function , which is reflected in the well-known expression ” buy-sell “.

It is not easy to establish the origin of the purchases in history , but it can be affirmed that the purchase is linked to the idea of ownership , which in the framework of legality can only be modified on the basis of a previous agreement.

During the first civilizations there was no purchase, since the system worked through the exchange of goods or barter . Instead of there being a buyer and a specific seller, both were on equal terms delivering one thing in exchange for another. With the emergence of the reserve units, which in the early days came to meet very basic needs associated with objects that could not be easily found in nature , the purchase arises and expands.

Thus, from a consensus, people tried to accumulate objects so that they could then exchange them without necessarily having anything else to deliver. Over time, metallic coins or paper money appeared , and a long time later electronic money would arrive that simplifies these operations even more.

2. What is the sale?

As noted, the purchase operation is linked to its counterpart, the sale operation . The legal phenomenon of these operations, which is legally regulated by the Commercial Codes, is known as sale. In this way, the characteristics of this kind of agreements and the possible taxes or fees that the State may require from the parties are clearly specified .

When consummated acts of sale generate a series of obligations for each of the parties:

• The seller. undertakes to guarantee a useful possession, to preserve the good until its delivery, and to transmit it together with its legal titles, not delivering anything more or anything less than agreed.
• The buyer. in parallel, it undertakes to pay the price and any possible interest that may be agreed, and to receive the commitment in the state that was announced.

The companies often have a purchasing department , which is responsible for acquiring all necessary for the company to operate normally. You must make decisions based on price, quality and functionality, and you must store what you buy and then provide it to the area that needs it.

3. Psychological effects of shopping

Psychologically, it can be said that the act of buying points to the satisfaction of individual needs . In certain cases, people acquire a pathological behavior that leads them to acquire all kinds of goods, including some totally unnecessary or inappropriate.

For these people the purchase works as an “escape valve” in the face of mood or depression problems , thus entering a vicious circle that is only solved by incurring purchases again.

This is called oniomania or compulsive buying, and it must be treated psychologically as the addiction it is . It should not be confused with people who respond to fashion or advertising , which are resources of companies to modify or create new needs, but social needs, not derived from an individual addiction.