A gift registry is a particular type of wish list

Wish List

There are two types of wish lists: personal wish lists, and software User wish lists.Personal wish lists compile an itemization of goods or services they desire. The list's author will then distribute copies of this list to family, friends, and other stakeholders who are likely to purchase gifts...

. Typically, when a recipient compiles a list of items they wish to receive and then hands it out to family and friends, they have created a wish list. A registry, on the other hand, is made public, and is limited to the stock of a given retailer. The retailer will maintain the list for the registrant and make sure that items are removed from the list as they are purchased. Retailers will often not divulge who has purchased the registered items. In 2004, North American Shopping Centers (notably Galleria Edina

Galleria Edina

The Galleria is an upscale shopping mall in Edina, Minnesota anchored solely by Gabberts Furniture. This mall is located directly across the street from the world's first enclosed mall, Southdale Center, which originally opened in 1956, although The Galleria is now more upscale than Southdale...

) began to extend this concept by offering registries that had access to multiple shops within individual Centers.

Goals

A managed registry system has several goals.

1. It facilitates communication between gift givers and receivers. Recipients can compile a gift registry and make it available to anyone who will present them with a gift. Gift givers can then be certain that they are purchasing items that the receiver will appreciate.
2. A registry can prevent gift givers from duplicating gifts when it is managed efficiently. To accomplish this, the retailer should remove each item from the registry as it is purchased.
3. The registry process should allow gift purchasers to be discrete about what they have bought. This is so the person receiving the gifts will not know who purchased which items until they are surprised at the time of gift giving.
4. The registry system should benefit the retailer by bringing customers to their store where they can purchase products that the merchant carries

Examples

• Perhaps the most common form of retailer registry is the bridal registry
  Bridal registry
  A bridal registry is a service provided by a website or retail store to assist engaged couples in the communication of gift preferences to wedding guests. Selecting items from store stock, the couple lists desired items and files this list with the chosen merchant. The list is then made available...
  
   whereby newly engaged couples would go to "register a china pattern" so guests to the wedding would know which style of dishes to buy for the newly married couple.
• Retailers such as Williams-Sonoma
  Williams-Sonoma
  Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is a high-end American consumer retail company that sells kitchenwares, furniture and linens, as well as other housewares and home furnishings, along with a variety of specialty foods, soaps and lotions...
  
  , Pottery Barn
  Pottery Barn
  Pottery Barn is an American-based home furnishing store chain with retail stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Since September 1986, when it was purchased from GAP, Inc, Pottery Barn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma, Inc....
  
  , J. C. Penney
  J. C. Penney
  -External links:*...
  
  , Wal-Mart
  Wal-Mart
  Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
  
  , Target
  Target Corporation
  Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
  
  , Fred Meyer
  Fred Meyer
  Fred Meyer, Inc., is a chain of hypermarkets founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, by Fred G. Meyer. The company was one of the pioneers of one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, clothing store, shoe store, fine jewelers, home decor store, home...
  
   and Shopko provide registries for almost any occasion.
• Online gift registries, such as WishFinger.com, http://www.iGIFTLIST.com, eGift-Registry.com, Whimventory.com, WishMirror.com, 89Wishes.com, WishlistButler.com, Wishzilla.com, WishWish.co.uk (UK), Wlistr.com, wishfish.com, igiftlist.com, giftbag and GiftList.co.uk (UK) are becoming a popular alternative to store-specific registries due to their flexibility in adding gifts, purchase coordination and social networking capabilities.
• In recent years a new type of online gift registry has emerged. These "gift card registry" websites like CardAvenue.com (the "first" gift card registry, according to their tag-line), allow people to request gift cards instead of physical gifts. There are two major advantages to this. First, recipients have the ability to trade the gift cards for cash easily using sites like GiftCardGranny.com, GiftCardRescue.com, and PlasticJungle.com. Second, rather than receiving many small gifts, recipients can request several small gift card denominations that add up to a large gift, thus allowing them to buy big-ticket items like furniture and vacations by pooling several gift cards together.
• Online family-based gift registries are also available such as GiftPickle.com and FamilyGiftRegistry.net. These registries are based upon sharing gifts and wish lists within a family group rather than an individual basis. They are store agnostic and are family centric in nature with sharing ideas among members of the group.

Universal Gift Registries

Another kind of registry is a Universal Gift Registry from websites like MyRegistry.com. MyRegistry.com is the premier destination for Universal Gift Registry services. The company currently provides hundreds of thousands of users with the ability to create one centralized online gift registry for any gift-giving occasion, including Weddings, Baby Showers, Birthdays, Graduations, Housewarmings, Holidays and more.

Along with offering online gift registry services to individuals, many organizations and nonprofits use MyRegistry.com as a valuable fundraising tool and convenient resource for requesting supplies and other items for donation.