Delicate, subtle and unstated desires hide behind a woman?s logical mind. Women sway all purchase verdicts, and multiple subliminal dimensions are factored into their choice. Too many statistics, existing facts and data can become an organisation?s bane that immobilises action. Yet have you considered tapping statistics of the world?s largest market segment? Marti Barletta writes in her book Marketing to Women that they make 85% of all buying decisions. This includes 94% of home furnishings, 92% vacations, 91% houses, 51% electronics, 84% banking decisions, 80% health care and as for cars, 60% are purchased by women and they influence 90% of the man?s car buying decision.

Multi-dimensional subconscious aspects impact men too, although it appears that they tend to buy based on immediate needs, on how well the product or service satisfies that need. Women consider the long-term, whether the purchase can be used again and again. Either way, as the technology revolution escalates, people?s sensitivity has been intensifying. Our understanding of products and our psychological involvement in them have increased conspicuously from what it was 15?20 years ago. The diverse ways we approach a product or service to extract individual benefits can be stretched like a piece of elastic. Our collective perception of quality has severely augmented, but when it comes to choice, it?s an individual who selects. Multi-dimensional mental involvement encompasses the choice of tomorrow?s consumers.

When customer psyche sensitive enterprises understand the factors affecting human psychology, they try to incorporate benefits that capture the consumer?s hidden desire. Traditionally, different products like the camera, television, computer and kitchen equipment were businesses of different competencies. Responding to the multi-dimensional aspect of choice driven by the subconscious, the compartmentalised outlook of manufacturing companies has been derailed. After all, the user of all these items is the same person. Because of the homemaker?s choice, a single manufacturing company like LG and Samsung, has entered the total ecology of her home.

Of the identified psycho-socio factors that will drive tomorrow?s business, behaviour is quite assessable, but what about reckoning the mind? This varies according to the nation, geography, culture, language, religion, economic class, the political milieu, age and family environment. Finally it?s a person?s self-confidence that stops the buck. Let me explain. At the very base of this decision making hierarchy is the country a person belongs, the kind of geography she lives in that induces specific purchases. The collective consciousness of culture, language and religion, plays a role as obvious as the economic class a person belongs to. The political environment plays an enabling part as to whether certain goods and services have been made available under that government.

Different age groups definitely behave in their diverse ways, influencing purchase or detracting others from spending. The immediate social and family environment factor in the decision for purchase, and at the very top is a person?s self confidence. If we have a population of say 6.5 billion people in the planet, we can upfront say there are 6.5 billion psychological strains to deal with. The accumulation of these strains comprises multi-dimensional consumer sensitivity.

No management process has to date found a mechanism of how to understand and capture the multidimensional psychological content of the human race.

Innovation needs the subconscious mind: The primary requirement of any company?s innovation centre must be the invaluable knowledge of people?s psychological dimension. Being tremendously sensitive to consumers will result in sustainable innovation. You may be serving your B2B customer, but your customer?s end consumer will be very involved with the psychological paradigm. Innovation centers in general employ technologists, engineers or scientists, but never consider recruiting psychologists or sociologists. The total absence of psychology or sociology makes innovation take on a technical shape without human sensitivity. This results in technology-based products, which then become generic. If the innovation environment considers the cognitive and societal ramifications, that innovation can gain in differentiation, in its capability to earn premium and to sustain in the market.

Sophisticated management theories to win against the competition are driven by numbers. Using modern technology, logic and mathematical matrix, they conjecture on given facts of the past. This is diametrically opposed to human development where intellectual facets grow at an individual level. Observing the market through standard statistics can generate enough data to paralyse an organisation or create an abscess in a business segment. In a given activity sector, all competitors watch the market in this same angle. Even as they lose the microtonal layers of the psyche, they end up dabbling in business mediocrity. So products and services in that domain start looking alike.

Benchmarking with statistics is a global business process. At a local level, it bypasses the consumers? psychological facets. Business leaders with articulation and number-crunching skills who feature in Fortune 500 global companies often get accolades for their company?s power, size, and business results. But if you ask these leaders what is the emotional level at which their product or service connects to the masses, will they be able to answer? They may score only with power and size.

Developed societies took a long time to understand the need of appreciating people?s subconscious choice, particularly of women. This realisation emerged from the competitive pressure in sophisticated markets. Intense competition threw corporations off their thrones to check out ground reality with more consumer research to understand psychological gaps. An economically emerging country like India has several socio-economic layers of women with differing psychological subsets. Do Indian organisations factor this in as the real market space to drive future business in?

If there is no world war in future, the world of business will run only on the basis of the human psychological aspect. Indian companies that aspire to become transnational have to venture into this area with substantial investment. Start with understanding the psychology of women, the world?s biggest buyers. This can win you an unending business platform to grow and sustain your business profitability.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top managements. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com