IN THE corner of a meeting room next to the bosses' office at the headquarters of Procter & Gamble (P&G), a large sculpture of a woman in a hat watches over proceedings with a serene smile. “She is at the centre of all our decisions,” says Richard Antoine, head of human resources and confidant of Alan Lafley, the company's chief executive.

Founded in 1837 by William Procter, a candlemaker, and James Gamble, who made soap, P&G is the world's biggest consumer-goods company. It sold $76.5 billion-worth of them in the year to June 30th. And it probably knows more about consumer marketing than any other firm on the planet. Interestingly, many people at P&G do not use the word “consumer”. Nor might they ask if a “customer” or “shopper” would buy a putative new product. They are more likely to ask: “Would ‘she’ buy it?”

Women have long accounted for four-fifths of P&G's customers. Over the years, the way P&G sells to them has changed dramatically. In the 1930s it sponsored radio shows—the original soap operas—to encourage women (usually housewives) to buy its detergent. Now radio has been surpassed by television and the internet as a means of promotion; and “she” has become ever more independent, demanding and fickle. The variety of products on offer has exploded, not just from makers of branded goods, like P&G, but also from the big supermarket chains that now dominate the retail end of the business and sell their own labels alongside the big brands.

“She is in control now,” says Mr Antoine. The consumer-goods giant is spending lots to find out what she actually wants. Staff from its Consumer and Market Knowledge division tour the world and spend entire days with women to observe how they shop, clean, eat, apply their make-up or put nappies on their babies. They try to understand how a woman reacts in the first three to seven seconds after she sees an item in a shop (the “First Moment of Truth”, in P&G-speak) and when she tries it at home (the “Second Moment of...