Every merchant seems to have a loyalty program these days. It makes sense to reward customers for their patronage and encourage even greater frequency. But, it appears there’s one kind of loyalty reward that may be more effective. One study showed that “irrelevant information” (in this case, largely valueless loyalty points) changed consumer buying decisions.

What the researchers identified in their experiments was went beyond the logical and expected effect of a loyalty program: the mere presence of point values influenced customer buying decisions. Even when the value of loyalty points was less than the value of a real-money price difference, they were swayed by the loyalty points:

The Neuromarketing takeaway from this research is that exposing customers to point values at the time of purchase can amplify the effectiveness of the loyalty program. Want to encourage sampling of a new product, or drive upgrades? Or get a customer to visit you instead of your competitor? Try something along the lines of, “100 extra Rewards Points with every purchase!” Read more at www.neurosciencemarketing.com

Visitors age 35-54 comprised 35.4% of Facebook’s user base in December 2010, down 3.6 percentage points from a year earlier, while Facebook’s share of its youngest users (under age 18) and oldest users (age 55+) made the year’s biggest gains, according to comScore.

Facebook’s share of visitors age 18 and younger rose to 11.1% in December, up 1.2 points from a year earlier, while visitors age 55+ climbed 1.9 points to 13.2%.

Below, selected findings from comScore’s report The 2010 US Digital Year in Review.

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