• by Aaron Baar , December 10, 2010

People are still waiting out the best deals for the holiday season, and are evenly divided as to whether they believe those deals will be found online or in brick-and-mortar retail stores.

According to StrategyOne's Annual Shopping Index, 65% of Americans surveyed said they were in no hurry to buy gifts and are still waiting for better deals, sales and promotions before they do a significant amount of shopping. Sixty percent of consumers said they haven't seen nearly enough deals so far this season.

"People are going to the stores and returning home without the products they intended to buy," Bradley Honan, senior vice president at StrategyOne, tells Marketing Daily. "What we can say is that people's perceptions are [that] the deals aren't there."

Furthermore, 55% said they had begun holiday shopping, but held off buying certain gifts because the prices weren't low enough yet. (Conversely, 54% said they saw several items representing a good value as they shopped.)

"We can only speculate" as to the reasons, Honan says. "[But] I think part of the reason is that the economy is sluggish and people thought the deals were going to be better."

Concerns about value have led some to look for other alternatives to gift-buying this holiday season. A majority (51%) have said they will find ways to celebrate without purchasing a lot of presents, and 10% have said they will do their shopping after the holidays, presumably to take advantage of even steeper discounts. At the same time, 54% of consumers believe shopping online helps them stay within their budgets.

When it comes to finding deals, 52% of Americans said they are finding the best deals online, while 48% said they're finding the best deals in brick-and-mortar stores.

"It's really a showdown between the two," Honan says. "It's going to be a dogfight to the end."