This year nearly 65 percent of back-to-school shoppers will turn to mobile and online coupons for additional savings.

According to a study by CoolSavings.com, 64 percent of the 1,100 consumers surveyed will turn to digital coupons. Out of the digital coupons, 3 percent of the consumers said they will use mobile coupons.

"While back-to-school shopping continues to be a ?traditional' activity -- with 97 percent of those surveyed planning to purchase in store versus the Internet -- digital couponing is now neck-in-neck with traditional couponing like newspaper inserts, perhaps for the first time," said Matt Wise, president of Q Interactive, the company that owns CoolSavings.com, Chicago.

"Approximately 35 percent of those surveyed said they would use printed coupons, which was just slightly less than the 39 percent who said they would use newspaper inserts," he said.

CoolSavings.com's goal is to make consumer's lives easier by being a free resource of coupons, discounts and other special offers from brands and stores. Q Interactive, the parent company of CoolSavings.com provides email and display solutions to help more than 1,000 leading brand advertisers reach their target consumers.

The study also found a majority of shoppers plan to use a variety of digital coupons to save money. Thirty-one percent will use online coupon sites, 22 percent will use emails from retailers and less than 2percent will use mobile coupons.

"At the end of the day, we're seeing a curious mix here -- traditional in store shopping fueled by lots of online activity," Mr. Wise said.

Despite the recession, 67 percent of consumers said they plan on spending the same amount of money, or more than last year. Forty-four percent of teens will be spending their own money.

People are using digital coupons, but not shopping online.

"What we can extrapolate from the findings," Mr. Wise said. "For example, 35 percent of those surveyed said their children influenced the back-to-school purchase and just know instinctively is that back-to-school is just one of those in-store purchases.

"Kids like to go with mom and dad, check out the backpacks and have a hand in the purchase decision. It is a tactical, touch-and-feel scenario," he said.

Mr. Wise said mobile has terrific potential to help users save money in the recession.

"Consumers consider their mobile device as an attachment of themselves," he said.

"Mobile is still relatively new. The reality is a lot of the infrastructure needs to be built before this takes off. There are lots of different kinds of phones," Mr. Wise said. "Retailers need to have the ability to easily scan at registers. Sales associates have to be trained. Structures need to house the information gathered."