AUSTIN, Texas (Feb. 19, 2016) – Whole Food Market topped FORTUNE’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” list for food and drug stores, for the fifth consecutive year.
The grocer is No. 24 on the magazine’s 2016 list for all industries, and is No. 1 in its category for quality of products and services, innovation, people management and social responsibility. Whole Foods Market is the only company in Austin, Texas, to make the list, and is one of three Texas-based companies recognized in the Top 50 list.
To see which companies made the list, visit: fortune.com/WMAC.
METHODOLOGY
THE MOST ADMIRED LIST is the definitive report card on corporate reputations. Our survey partners at Korn Ferry Hay Group started with approximately 1,500 companies: the Fortune 1,000— the 1,000 largest U.S. companies ranked by revenue—and non-U.S. Companies in Fortune’s Global 500 database with revenues of $10 billion or more. Korn Ferry Hay Group then selected the 15 largest for each international industry and the 10 largest for each U.S. industry, surveying a total of 652 companies from 30 countries. To create the 54 industry lists, Korn Ferry Hay Group asked executives, directors, and analysts to rate companies in their own industry on nine criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. A company’s score must rank in the top half of its industry survey to be listed.
Because of the distribution of responses, only the aggregate industry scores and ranks are published in Construction and Farm Machinery; Mining, Crude-Oil Production; and Petroleum Refining. Because of an insufficient response rate, the results for companies in the Energy: U.S. and Pipelines industries are not reported.
To arrive at the top 50 Most Admired Companies overall (our “All-Stars”), Korn Ferry Hay Group asked 4,000 executives, directors, and securities analysts who had responded to the industry surveys to select the 10 companies they admired most. They chose from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in last year’s surveys, plus those that finished in the top 20% of their industry. Anyone could vote for any company in any industry. The difference in the voting rolls is why some results can seem anomalous. For example, St. Jude Medical ranks No. 40 on the overall Most Admired list, returning after a two-year hiatus. But within the medical products and equipment subgroup, St. Jude Medical, based on its peers’ responses, missed the “Industry Standouts” cut by ranking in the bottom half of the group.
