THE BRIGHT COUNTERPART

I've seen the same physician in Southern California for more than a decade, but somehow this visit felt different. Walking into the waiting room, I was greeted by a sterile scent and silence. Knowing the drill, I wrote my name on a clipboard with a plastic pen stamped with the name of a cholesterol pill. The receptionist didn't look up to acknowledge my presence, so after a few awkward moments trying to catch her eye, I took a seat.

Like most doctors' offices, there wasn't much to occupy one's attention. I could either stare at the tacky wallpaper or thumb through germ-covered magazines from 2009.

Squeezed into a stained, cloth chair and confined by eighteen sniffling and snotty people, I opted for the latter.

Three outdated magazines later, I looked at my watch to realize that I was forty-five minutes past my scheduled appointment time. My foot tapped nervously, and I shifted in my seat. Finally, a nurse popped her head out of the door: "Mr. Partridge." I rose and followed her down the hallway where she recorded my weight and temperature before dropping me off in a bleak room.

I waited again. This time, without even the benefit of a Reader's Digest. Finally, at one hour and twelve minutes past my appointment time, the physician arrived.

"Hello, Mr. Partridge," he said without looking up from my chart. "What can I help you with?"

I wanted to say he could help me by making me feel like I actually mattered, but I chose instead to explain that I had a killer case of heartburn.

"Oh, okay," he replied. "I'll give you a prescription of [some word that I think started with an X]. The nurse will get you taken care of."

And—boom—he was gone. Three minutes tops.

Gathering my things and collecting my prescription, I exited through the waiting room past a herd of patients en route to the same experience. In the parking lot that day, I sat in my car stunned at what had just transpired. I considered going back in and shouting, "What the heck is going on here?" and demanding an explanation for the antiquated, dishonoring experience and complete disregard for my time. With my luck, I figured that would probably end in being tackled or tasered by a four-hundred-pound man with the flu. So I let it go.

FEELINGS OF BETRAYAL

In retrospect, the outrage I felt that day is strange because I'd been through this exact scenario dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. I had only noticed what had always been there. In a recent study, 34 physicians were taped while serving more than 300 visits with patients. Those doctors spent an average of 1.3 minutes conveying crucial information about the patient's condition and treatment, and most of it was too technical for patients to grasp. Worse still, those same physicians thought they had spent more than 8 minutes. And this isn't just the doctors' fault. A few years ago, publicly traded HMOs began restricting doctors to a seven-minute "encounter" with each patient to keep shareholders happy. The industry is actually mandating lower quality in order to maximize profits.

Unfortunately, these kinds of experiences aren't restricted to health care. The last couple of decades have been dominated by companies and organizations that value profit more than the people they serve. From fashion to food, banking to advertising, we're confronted with examples of how ugly capitalism can be.

• Our grocery store shelves are packed with products from agricultural biotechnology companies who attack the purity of our food to increase efficiency even if it harms consumers.

• Cell-phone and satellite-dish companies force multiyear contracts on their customers, trapping them in a prison of subpar service where they must pay an expensive cancellation fee to switch to a superior competitor. This is apparently preferable to providing better products and services.

• Fast-food companies have increased efficiency at the expense of quality, creating menu items loaded with chemicals, preservatives, and thousands of calories that contribute to the obesity epidemic in America.

• Banks choose not to notify their customers or block transactions when customers hit a zero balance. Instead, they allow customers to borrow the money in multiple negative transactions per day while charging unmerciful overdraft fees. In 2012, consumers nationally paid $32 billion in overdraft fees, a $400 million jump from 2011.

• Insurance companies reroute customers in predominantly English-speaking markets to an internationally outsourced customer support team where broken-English-speaking reps read from a rote script in hopes that a one-size-fits-all approach will somehow solve their individual problems.

• Credit-card companies shell out hundreds of millions of dollars per year on positive marketing campaigns showcasing the rewards of using their product, but bury oppressive terms and conditions in the fine print. To convince you of their integrity, they offer you a small cash reward to refer a friend to sign up too.

All around us, colossal brands that once stood for integrity and quality have begun to tiptoe across ethical eggshells—condoning growth strategies, marketing campaigns, and customer-satisfaction policies that are not only unacceptable but also downright disingenuous—hoping their customers won't notice.

Unfortunately for them, customers have noticed, turning a corporate trend into a consumer-trust epidemic that has toppled more than one industry titan. The marketplace has given many deceptive companies a stark choice: change or die.

HOPE IS RISING

Luckily, change is afoot, and not just among existing organizations. In the midst of this downward capitalistic spiral, a bright counterpart is emerging. It's a counterpart that is healthy and contract free, that will pay more for better quality and higher ethical standards, that cares not just about profit but also the well-being of their customers and the state of the world. This bright counterpart has been called "conscious capitalism" or the "social good movement." But whatever label you choose, the trend is gaining serious traction.

According to a 2012 global survey, 47 percent of consumers now say they buy at least one brand that supports a good cause every month. To put this in perspective, that's a 47 percent increase since 2010. Additionally, 72 percent of consumers say they...