Can Wal-Mart ever do the right thing?

This is a reprinting of my quarterly column Eye on the Pie, Spring 2006--but I'm gonna start writing again!

In the classic choice, people almost always pick the bad news to hear first—they want to cut to the chase. But when the bad news is Wal-Mart, Philip Morris and Coors, unless the good news is “what is the answer to the question which three multi-national corporations are destined to go out of business in the next year,” let’s face facts, you don’t want to hear it.

So what is the good news really? It’s that socially responsible business is hot hot hot. Every company in America is scrambling to prove that that it contributes to the commonweal. And the bad news is, you guessed it, this includes Wal-Mart, Philip Morris and Coors.

Or is it bad? Let’s examine the trends and the opportunities here. Other than the tardy dawning of the Age of Aquarius, it would seem that the main reason for corporate America to go ethical is a market segment called LOHAS.

According to Wikipedia, LOHAS stands for Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability and describes a $227 billion, 68 million person segment of the American marketplace, 32.3% of all American adults.

This fascinating group of people defies traditional market categorization—they cannot be defined by age, gender, education, or money alone. What defines them is their values, what they want to have happen in the world and how they want their consumer dollars to drive what wants to happen.

No company better meets the needs of this market segment than Whole Foods, whose 100s of stores across the country stock organic and sustainably harvested foods, body care products and, increasingly, clothing and household products.

After decades of double digit growth in the American economy, companies like Safeway and Wal-Mart have developed their own organic lines to go onion to onion with Whole Foods, local natural foods co-ops and Trader Joe’s.

And this is good news, right? This is what we wanted to happen—consumers would make it clear that they wanted environmentally sustainable, naturally pure products and giant corporations would eventually have to respond, right?

Well, maybe. According to Hijacked: Businesses for Social Responsibility by the ubiquitous megaphone-wielding Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Washington-based Corporate Crime Reporter, in an effort to tarnish their terrible images, giant massively unethical corporations including Philip Morris tobacco holding company have taken over a once legitimate business group called Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Soon it seems, the phrase social responsible business may have no meaning whatsoever. If all businesses claim this, how do you discern from whom and what to buy?

The real good news may be that the very qualities that make a member of the LOHAS market buy organic, make them want the product to actually be what it says it is. Accordingly to market research, people who shop this way defy traditional marketing strategies. They mistrust all advertising, read newspapers and books and make their own decisions on the basis of what they believe about what is true.

Invariably, that may leave Wal-Mart, Coors and Philip Morris out in the cold.

©Sara S. Nichols, 2006

Sara is a founding partner of the Gross National Happiness Team, a business that gives away 50% of its sales to organizations promoting peace and justice.