Holiday Shoppers Expected to Spend $845 on Gifts

The survey also reported that there will be an increase in online shopping with shoppers saying 57 percent of their purchases will be made on the Web, followed by 40 percent at brick-and-mortar stores and 3 percent from a mobile phone. Meanwhile, 80 percent of consumers said they plan to monitor prices at competing retailers in order to get the best deal.

"Last year, we saw large-scale price wars between major retailers, which resulted in deeply discounted products," says Laura Conrad, president of PriceGrabber, a part of Experian. "This year, we expect especially competitive price wars beginning early in the season. Shoppers need to evaluate the benefit of monitoring price wars for the lowest price versus potentially missing out on the most popular