New LOHAS Index™ Reveals Companies Can Do More to Effectively Communicate Sustainability Efforts to Consumers

HARLEYSVILLE, PA, March 16, 2007 — The Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) today released a ranking of the fifty most environmentally and socially responsible companies that is for the first time based on both a consumer perspective and investment analyst ratings of corporate sustainability and responsibility.

Developed and marketed by NMI, a leading health, wellness and sustainability market research and consulting firm, The LOHAS Index™ reveals that consumers are harsher critics of companies' sustainability practices than the analyst community, and often are misinformed or unaware about a company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs.

"More than ever, consumers are eager to learn about a company’s CSR practices," said Steve French, NMI managing
partner. "We were astonished at the size of the disconnect between those companies who operationally rated well with the analysts but received low scores based on consumers’ perceptions. Organizations need to provide more effective messaging to communicate CSR programs to consumers – focusing on the benefits of CSR – which have been proven to provide higher levels of return on investment in the form of brand loyalty, purchase intent and decreased price sensitivity.”

The fifty companies in the LOHAS Index were selected from the Russell 3000®, a stock index consisting of the 3,000 largest publicly traded U.S. companies, representing about 98 percent capitalization of the entire U.S. stock market. Following are the top ten companies in The LOHAS Index that are doing well in terms of doing a good job of both incorporating CSR in their operations as well as communicating it to consumers:

1. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT: Nasdaq)
2. Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFMI: Nasdaq)
3. Kellogg Company (K: NYSE)
4. McDonald's Corporation (MCD: NYSE)
5. The Home Depot, Inc. (HD: NYSE)
6. The Walt Disney Company (DIS: NYSE)
7. United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS: NYSE)
8. The Coca-Cola Company (KO: NYSE)
9. Starbuck's Corporation (SBUX: Nasdaq)
10. PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP: NYSE)

The LOHAS Index measures CSR performance through consumer perception of sustainability and investor analysis of actual sustainability across seven criteria, including: community, corporate governance, diversity, employee relations, environment, human rights and product. The LOHAS Index can be used to identify strategies for companies to better align their CSR programs with their respective marketing and consumer outreach efforts.

Companies are listed in The LOHAS Index based on their composite score. A company’s rank on the Index is a function of both a financial analyst rating and consumer perception. Those companies ranking at the top of the list are generally doing a good job of both acting sustainably and communicating their sustainability efforts effectively. Companies falling in the middle of the Index are under-performing their higher-ranked peers either in actual sustainability efforts or in communication of those efforts. Finally, those companies at the bottom of the Index might benefit from improving their actual performance as well as what they communicate to consumers.

The Natural Marketing Institute
The Natural Marketing Institute is a strategic consulting, market research and business development company specializing in the health, wellness, and sustainability marketplace. Its capabilities focus on the well-being of people and products, and the environmentally and socially responsible sustainability of the planet. For more information on The LOHAS Index and NMI, visit www.LOHASIndex.com or www.NMIsolutions.com.

LOHAS is an acronym that stands for Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability. LOHAS consumers are a segment of the population, roughly 1 in 6 U.S. consumers (or 35 million U.S. adults), with strong environmental and social values, and who base many of their purchase decisions accordingly. LOHAS consumers are used to predict upcoming trends in the market and are the portion of the population that have been identified as the “key influencers.”
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