• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, December 15, 2010

With stores already offering big sales on some of the season's hottest items, shoppers are biting. But a new survey from the National Retail Federation reports that the average consumer has only crossed off 49.5% percent of her list. (That's up a bit from last year, when the average person had only finished 46.7% of holiday shopping.) As a result, the Washington, D.C.-based trade groups expects retailers to crank up the price cuts in the season's final few weeks.

Still, it's all good: So good, in fact, the NRF has raised its forecast, and now expects the season to end up 3.3% to $451.5 billion, not the 2.3% it predicted last month. "The start to the holiday season has surpassed all expectations," NRF president/CEO Matthew Shay says in its release. "While employment data is still a concern, we are starting to see improvement in other economic indicators that support an increase to our forecast."

The survey, conducted by BIGResearch, finds that 16.9% of Americans haven't even started shopping, while 10.1% are already finished. And while 32.4% plan to finish shopping this weekend, Friday, December 24, is expected to be the second busiest day.