The person who followed John Donahoe this morning was in for a tall task, so Shop.org was fortunate that today’s final keynote was Resource Interactive’s Kelly Mooney, who is always one of the most anticipated speakers at the Summit. During her keynote, Mooney compared current opinions and shopping patterns of teens to those of “digital” moms, talking about how the recession has changed their shopping habits and providing insight into how retailers can compensate.

It’s no secret that today’s shoppers are cutting back, she said, but research also shows they feel good about it. “Today’s consumers are wearing this new frugality as a badge of honor,” Mooney said, citing a McKinsey study that 55% of Americans are cutting back not out of necessity, but by choice. Even people who can afford to shop feel a pressure to scale back, she said, which understandably creates challenges for retailers.

“We had a lot of women telling us they were shopping online because they didn’t want friends to see, didn’t want it to be as obvious,” Mooney said. “There’s a whole secret shopper emerging, which is why sites like Gilt are rising to the top.”

Although 75% of teens receive the same or more of an allowance compared with last year, unemployment for this group has reached an all-time high, forcing them to be more resourceful in finding ways to make money and forcing them to resort to swapping and selling items in order to buy more. (I loved this quote: “They have rediscovered all the junk in their house that has value.”) Some teens are also doing “online chores,” Mooney said, uploading photos from a family camera to the computer, burning CDs, helping parents with their taxes (!) and undertaking other projects that parents either don’t know how to do or simply don’t want to undertake.

Unlike their older siblings, who were part of the over-coddled Gen Y, today’s teens are savvy about money and are serious about looking for good deals, Mooney said. “Teens have discovered online research, clearance racks, coupons, selling and swapping,” she said. “They are mimicking their parents. They have discovered the tools of the web because they have to.”

Moms are also significantly worried about the economy, she said, and are focused on setting a good financial example to their kids. In a perverse way, research found, some moms actually feel liberated by the economic downturn because they no longer feel a pressure to spend more than they should or keep up with the neighbors like they used to. As one mom profiled in a resource Interactive video said, “It took the recession to scale back but we should have been doing it anyway.”

Much like teens, moms are also focused on finding good deals and rely considerably on coupons. (This is similar to what we heard from Dawn Lepore yesterday.) Coupon sites are the second only to job sites as the most-visited web category, Mooney said, and retailers should use that knowledge to look for opportunities to help her save money.

Moms are also trading down – and many of them are trading way down. Several of the women profiled in the videos were trading down from Nordstrom to Payless or North Face to Champion. While this is most definitely a challenge, Mooney said, it is also an opportunity, providing retailers with new ways to serve existing customers, or opportunities to gain new ones. (Teens, by the way, aren’t trading down – they know what they like – but they are spending less.)

Her advice to retailers? Find ways to innovate your way out of the recession. From Jansport integrating Facebook onto its website to American Apparel’s “rummage sale” and Hyundai’s “assurance” program, there are myriad ways for retailers to dig deeper and be creative.

One other key to make it out of this recession? If you fail, fail quickly. “Fail quickly, learn, test, and launch,” Mooney said. “Being agile is going to be the key.”