Interesting study from McKinsey showing a huge and troubling gap between how corporations and consumers see corporate social responsibility.

The study The trust gap between consumers and corporations found that most consumers are sceptical about the contributions that corporations make to the public good. While 68 per cent of executives said large corporations made a positive contribution, only 48 per cent of consumers agreed. Interestingly, consumers in China and India were more positive about corporations than their peers in Europe, Japan and the US.

The interesting part about the study is the big gap between corporations and consumers on key issues. When asked to select the three issues that would be most important to them over the next five years, 47 per cent of consumers picked environmental issues, followed by pension and retirement benefits (38 per cent) and health care (31 per cent).

By way of contrast, executives nominated offshoring and job losses (42 per cent), privacy and data security (33 per cent) and environment (31 per cent) as the three hot issues.

Asked to nominate a single action that would improve the reputation of big companies, consumers said it would be to improve benefits and conditions for employees, to tighten safety and environmental procedures and to limit redundancies. As far as the corporations were concerned, the most effective actions were to improve corporate governance, increase philanthropy and social investments and improve benefits and conditions for employees.

Clearly, corporations seem to be clueless when it comes to identifying the big issues are on the minds of consumers.

And that's a worry, because consumers not only make their feelings known through their purchasing decisions. They also influence politicians and regulators who establish the rules for how the market should operate.