Patent ID: 7996280

Claim:
A method for providing a gift registry in an on-line mall, the method comprising: providing multiple communities within an on-line mall environment, each of the multiple communities including a plurality of specialty stores targeted at specific demographic markets; providing multiple stores within each community, each store being occupied by a merchant with merchandise directed to this community; providing customer access to the multiple stores; providing a gift registry, where the gift registry is associated with any of the multiple stores within one or more of the multiple communities; providing access to the gift registry to a registrant customer, so that the registrant customer can select merchandise for entry into the gift registry; providing access to the gift registry to a purchase customer so that the purchase customer can select for purchase, merchandise selected by the registrant customer, from any of the multiple stores within one or more of the multiple communities, for entry into the gift registry; providing the purchase customer with an electronic shopping cart to store the selected merchandise, for purchase, from any of the multiple stores within one or more of the multiple communities; and providing a single check out to process purchase of the selected merchandise, stored by the electronic shopping cart, from any of the multiple stores within the one or more of the multiple communities.