context to use call and apply in Javascript?

You use call or apply when you want to pass a different this value to the function. In essence, this means that you want to execute a function as if it were a method of a particular object. The only difference between the two is that call expects parameters separated by commas, while apply expects parameters in an array.

An example from Mozilla’s apply page, where constructors are chained:

function Product(name, price) {
    this.name = name;
    this.price = price;

    if (price < 0)
        throw RangeError('Cannot create product "' + name + '" with a negative price');
    return this;
}

function Food(name, price) {
    Product.apply(this, arguments);
    this.category = 'food';
}
Food.prototype = new Product();

function Toy(name, price) {
    Product.apply(this, arguments);
    this.category = 'toy';
}
Toy.prototype = new Product();

var cheese = new Food('feta', 5);
var fun = new Toy('robot', 40);

What Product.apply(this, arguments) does is the following: The Product constructor is applied as a function within each of the Food and Toy constructors, and each of these object instances are being passed as this. Thus, each of Food and Toy now have this.name and this.category properties.