Today I was quoted on the front page of the Financial Times in an article that discussed ‘regifting’, a term used to describe the behavior of giving someone a gift that one received as a gift from someone else. There were a flurry of similar articles in leading papers across the country. FutureShop was extensively excerpted in the FT article. I also appeared on CNBC to discuss the same topic this evening.

The general interest in the topic stems from the belief that people are starting to sell unwanted gifts on eBay rather than regifting them - a newsworthy topic for the week after Christmas.

Gifting is generally an economically inefficient behavior (unless you are giving cash, of course). Think about it for a moment. You are buying something for someone, yet you don’t really know the value that person will place on the item. In fact, it’s more than likely they will value the item at less than what you paid for it. Why? Because, if the recipient valued it as much, they would have likely bought it themselves (assuming they knew the item existed). And if they did buy it (and already own it) your duplicative gift is certainly worth a lot less to them than the first one they bought for themselves. (For example, how much would you pay for an identical shirt to the one you already own?) .

Fortunately, there are new and evolving practices that are helping make gift giving more efficient. The gift registry allows the recipient to tell its would-be gifters exactly what he or she wants. But gift registries are traditionally used for weddings (and more recently for baby showers). It is not yet culturally acceptable to register for birthdays, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs etc. Problem solved with the advent of the wish list, an Internet innovation that allows users of sites offering this feature to keep a running list online that lets the world know exactly what they want.

If you dont like to be told what to give - after all, a certain component of gifting is self serving…like getting the satisfaction of delivering a surprise to a friend or loved one, or deriving pleasure from making someone feel good - you can make the process more efficient by including a gift receipt with your gift. Gift receipts allow the recipient to exchange the gift hassle-free with something they prefer. Think back to the time when the only alternative would have been to include the actual receipt which revealed the cost - too tacky to ever have become mainstream. There is also the gift card, which like the gift receipt, allows you to control the venue of the purchase but not the actual item. There is an interesting secondary market for gift cards developing online as discussed in FutureShop as well as in this article.

If the gifts you received for the holidays this year didn’t come off your wish list or didn’t include a gift receipt, there are always the dropshops who are ready, willing and available to sell your unwanted gifts for you on eBay. They’ll even sell your gift cards if you don’t like the stores they came from!