Did you see us featured on Good Morning America?! They did a segment on recent trends toward families using holiday gift registries to manage gift giving. GMA wanted to know: are they efficient.. or are they rude? Do they help prevent re-gifting and bad gift situations or do they fly in the face of etiquette? They shared some information from a study at Harvard Business School and got some feedback from people on the street and online.

The answer? Registering for gifts rocks! Well, we may be slightly biased- but a lot of people agree!

The results of a series of studies at HBS revealed that gift recipients perceived gifts as more thoughtful when they were given from a wishlist.

They found, “gift recipients are more appreciative of gifts they explicitly request than those they do not. In contrast, gift givers assume that both solicited and unsolicited gifts will be equally appreciated. At the root of this dilemma is a difference of opinion about what purchasing an unsolicited gift signals: gift givers expect unsolicited gifts will be considered more thoughtful and considerate by their intended recipients than is actually the case.”

So what do they mean? That oftentimes a short cut to gift-giving happiness lies in registering for gifts you’d like to receive or buying gifts for others from their own wishlists. Beyond the benefit of knowing that the recipient will love the gift, there are additional benefits to using a registry like saving time and money. Registries mean less time spent researching and tracking down the perfect gift since you’ll know exactly what they want. And with a full picture of the desired gifts of the entire family, it is easier to meet your budget for the season as a whole.

While undoubtedly some people will be resistant to move to the registry model for family gifting occasions, the time savings and assuredness of a perfect gift are enough for many people to make the shift. When you do, we hope you’ll use CheckedTwice!

To see our segment on Good Morning America, click here. To read more about the results of the Harvard Business School studies on gifting, click here. And to sign up to use CheckedTwice as a family gift registry for the upcoming holiday season, click here. Happy Gifting!