§2.9.5 Material information in invitations to purchase – Article 7(4)

Invitations to purchase Article 2(i) ‘invitation to purchase’ means a commercial communication which indicates characteristics of the product and the price in a way appropriate to the means of the commercial communication used and thereby enables the consumer to make a purchase; For ‘invitations to purchase’, Article 7(4) of the UCPD regards certain pieces of information as ‘material’. This means that traders will need to provide consumers with this information if it not otherwise apparent from the context. The ‘characteristics of the product’ are invariably present as soon as there is verbal or visual reference to the product. A different interpretation could incentivise traders to provide vague product descriptions or omit information in their commercial offers in order to circumvent the information requirements provided for by Article 7(4) of the UCPD. The last part of the definition in Article 2(i) (‘and thereby enables the consumer to make a purchase’) does not require the commercial communication to provide the consumer with a mechanism to actually purchase (e.g. a phone number or a coupon). It means that the information given in the product marketing must be sufficient to enable the consumer to take the decision as to whether to purchase a specific product for a specific price. In the Ving Sverige case, the Court held: ‘It follows that, for a commercial communication to be capable of being categorised as an invitation to purchase, it is not necessary for it to include an actual opportunity to purchase or for it to appear in proximity to and at the same time as such an opportunity.’ (204) An invitation to purchase is a narrower concept than advertising, and not all commercial communications will qualify as an invitation to purchase within the meaning of Article 2(i). However, an invitation to purchase is a wider concept than pre-contractual information. While pre-contractual information requirements refer to information that needs to be provided before the consumer enters into a contract, an invitation to purchase does not necessarily imply that the next step for the consumer is to enter into a contract with a trader. For example: Radio advertising that includes a product’s characteristics and price is an invitation to purchase, but will normally not qualify as pre-contractual information. This distinction is particularly important in relation to the interplay between the UCPD and the CRD. A wide variety of commercial communications would normally qualify as invitations to purchase. For example: — An airline website displaying offers for flights and their prices. — A mail order advertisement (205). — A leaflet from a supermarket advertising discounted prices on certain products. The UCPD leaves traders the choice as to whether to include the price in their commercial communications. A commercial communication or advertisement that includes an exhaustive description of a product or service’s nature, characteristics and benefits but not its price cannot be considered an ‘invitation to purchase’ within the meaning of Article 2(i) of the UCPD. An example of commercial communications which are not invitations to purchase would be advertisements promoting a trader’s ‘brand’ rather than any particular product (i.e. brand advertising). For example: A national court ruled that an advertisement inviting a consumer to visit a website to obtain an insurance offer does not constitute an invitation to purchase (206).

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07