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What is the difference in meaning between Is there a preference for Specifically in e-shops, when should we use When should we use them as a verb, and when as a noun? |
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Purchase means to buy or acquire something. If you walk down the street, pop into your local BestBuy store and buy a computer, you can say that you purchased a computer. Order means that you request, book or reserve something. In some cases you wouldn't be charged for the item until it's been shipped to you. In AmE, I can't speak for BrE, if you buy something online, you place an order for it. You could very well say you purchased something from Amazon, but that wouldn't be that common as the other one. That said, in todays online world, the two would seem interchangeable and wouldn't make a big difference unless you were an orthodox. |
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In US usage they can have different meanings. In connection with commercial transactions, order means
This may or may not indicate a completed transaction. Sometimes you want to consider a purchase and the goods are not in stock. The shop might order the product so that it is available for you to consider at a later date. Even the shop may not be purchasing the goods since they may be on consignment. Purchase is a completion of a transaction
At times, the placing of an order may invovle a purchase, but that depends on the circumstances of the relationship. The noun forms of each verb have comparable meanings and the choice of word form is a question of style. |
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In general, you would not use order as a verb if you walked through a store, selected items from the shelf, and took them to a cash register to pay. The verb order is used when a customer requests something for purchase (e.g., we can order a book from Amazon, or order a meal at a restaurant). However, order can be (and is) used as a noun in the point-of-sale environment. For example, a supervisor might say to a cashier:
For some reason, purchase a book on Amazon sounds find to me, but purchase a meal at a restaurant sounds decidedly less familiar than order a meal at a restaurant, although I'd hardly call purchase inaccurate or ungrammatical in that context. |
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While it is true that, because of the (so to speak) mechanics of online commerce, the two can often be used interchangeably, there is a difference in what the terms represent. Ownership officially changes with a purchase; but not necessarily with an order. An order is the result of a performative verb to order. If I order you to shut the door (assuming all the felicity conditions for ordering are true), then you have an order to shut the door -- but I do not yet have a shut door -- once again assuming the context is felicitous, I can expect to have it soon, but I don't have it yet. In a commercial context, the customer orders (in the particular commercial sense) the merchant to deliver a product, in return for payment. The customer pledges the payment, and the merchant pledges the product, but this is still at the pledging stage; nothing needs to change hands in an order, except by pre-arranged convention. Both sides can expect the pledges to be redeemed in the future; but not yet. Purchase, on the other hand -- a higher-register term for buy -- refers to the entire Commercial Transaction Frame. If I purchase something, then I have already paid for it, reserved it, and own it. It may or may not be in my physical possession -- it might be in for repair, or not delivered yet, or loaned to a museum -- but it's mine and I possess it already. |
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They can generally be used interchangeably. I believe the preference is using purchase as a verb and order as a noun. Interchangeable verb: "I am going to purchase|order some tea." Interchangeable noun: "Thank you for your purchase|order." Not interchangeable (noun vs verb): "I would like to place an order for both black tea and green tea." vs "I would like to purchase both black tea and green tea." "I would like to add items to my order." vs "I would like to purchase additional items." To make things more confusing, there is a concept called "Purchase Order" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_order |
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