The following article was originally written for CompareItAll.com. The rights have reverted to the author.
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Just about anything can be a gift, but shopping for gifts is very different from shopping for yourself -- the objectives, the tactics, and the approach to pricing. And there's some merchandise that it is hard to imagine ever buying for yourself -- they are just "gifts."
The real challenge comes when what the recipients wants falls into a category about which you are totally clueless, which is quite common when a woman is buying for a man or a man for a woman or a non-parent adult buying for a child.
Here you need suggestions and advice. You want help and background information, but not in depth. You may not want to become an expert in jewelry or lingerie or Pokemon toys or golf. You just want to buy the right gift for this one person.
Have you ever had the experience of watching someone open a gift from you and his/her face switch from excited anticipation to puzzlement. Then you get the uncomfortable feeling that the gift says more about you than the recipient, that, in fact, the gift may signal that you know this person less well that he/she presumed you did. What was meant to delight might even throw your relationship into doubt.
Even worse, the recipient opens the gift, but not having seen who it was from, and presumes he/she opened it by mistake -- that it was really meant for you.
I'm guilty. I love books and know books and am inclined to buy books for everyone. Of course, I try hard to pick books that match the interests of the recipient. But all too often, I wind up reading the books I gave my wife before she gets around to reading them. (I don't know why she puts up with me.)
In the past, I tried periodically to work on this failing of mine and went out of my way to buy, as gifts, clothing or other kinds of things that I simply don't understand -- to resounding yawns.
Now with some of the sophisticated gift suggestion services at online stores, I have a chance for redemption. (The proof will come soon. My wife's birthday comes just a week after Valentine's Day.)
Amazon also has a "Gift-Click" service, where you just enter the recipient's email address and Amazon contacts the recipient to arrange delivery.
Some stores, like Amazon, let you fill in a form for "Special Occasion Reminders." You fill in the name of the person whose occasion you'll be celebrating, the type of occasion, the date, and when you want to be reminded. You can also write a reminder note to yourself that will be emailed to you. That's a good way to avoid missing important birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, etc. You only need to use one such service.
Gift certificates are also handy -- especially if you didn't use a reminder service, and just remembered a birthday on the day itself. Typically, you pay by credit card, and the recipient immediately gets an email with a personalized message from you, and then with a code, can shop online for whatever he or she wants, using the code at check-out to pay for part of all of the purchase price.
As of now, there does not seem to be any central gift registry. (Please let me know if and when you come across one -- it's a natural business model). Rather, each major Web store maintains its own separate registry.
Typically, for instance, at eToys, when you see something you like but don't want to buy today, you can click to add it to your "wish list." And if you'd like others to know what kinds of things you want, you can make that wish list viewable by other people in the form of a gift registry. The registry keeps track of what items on a list have been purchased, so you can avoid having two people buy the same thing for you.
If you have people who you regularly buy gifts for, do whatever you can to convince them to build gift registries at their favorite stores and to let you know what those stores are. Then you're safe: they won't be disappointed.
On the other hand, they won't be surprised or delighted.
To reach a higher plane of being, you'll have to pick the right store and take full advantage of its gift finder services. I'll provide suggestions of that kind in my next article.
Online shopping advice
The Online Shopping Directory
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