They’re in – the pre-holiday consumer and merchant results of the 2009 Shop.org eHoliday Study (conducted with our partner, BIGresearch) are now available from the Shop.org Web site. The summary offers so much data to peruse that I could go on for pages about all that merchants have done to prepare, what they plan to offer (and not), how consumers are thinking about the impending Holiday season, and more. Instead – a couple of highlights herewith, in addition to the Shop.org press release issued today as well.

Who will be shopping online? As noted in the NRF consumer holiday survey earlier this week, not quite half (42%) of consumers surveyed plan to do some portion of their holiday spending via the Web. However, these online shoppers will also be buying in discount, department and specialty stores. Approximately two-thirds of consumers estimate spending about the same as they did last year for the holidays.

Merchant expecations and preparations. 4 out of 5 merchants surveyed expect to see growth for Holiday ’09 vs. Holiday ’08. To achieve this growth, merchants surveyed have prepared significantly over the past months, investing in new / improved cart, site search, cross-selling, sale, and video functionality on their sites (though not as much in imagery, which consumers actually want), and renegotiating with suppliers to contain costs.

What matters to consumers. Ultimately though, consumers tell us that what matters most to them in choosing to do business with a given retailer is seeing the complete shopping cart total before checkout, clear product descriptions, value for money (yes, in third place this year, economic pressures not withstanding), free returns shipping offers (more on this below…), and the merchant’s reputation. Once on the site, consumers will most want to see product reviews from other customers, clearance / sale pages, and the shipping deadlines calendar (among other things).

Marketing and promotions. In addition to reaching out to their all-important existing customers via email, approximately two-thirds of retailers surveyed have either added new or recently improved their Facebook and Twitter presence as well. As it turns out, consumers may not actually start their shopping at social media sites and blogs, but they do turn to them when they are researching products. Merchants also won’t be waiting long to start offering discounts and free shipping offers. Consumers most want to see free shipping offers and coupons – creating a balancing act for merchants who have to manage the costs involved for both of those. Merchants’ biggest promotion blind spot? Call it the Zappos factor – free shipping for returns, which two-thirds of merchants surveyed don’t offer/won’t use at all, and which just a fraction of merchants surveyed plan to emphasize this holiday season.

As mentioned earlier, there is much more data available to Shop.org members from the pre-holiday consumer and merchant survey results. Members can now download the summary deck as well as the aggregated data itself, which includes consumer data segmented by sex, household income, age and U.S. census region.

Please feel free to post a comment below with your thoughts and comments. In the meantime, here’s to a fast and strong start to your holiday season!