The story
Founded by J. D. Power in 1968, in Agoura Hills.1
JD Power was founded in 1968 by James David Power III.
Power had previously worked in advertising and customer research for the Ford Motor Company, where he felt customer satisfaction data was too often overlooked. He later joined Marplan, and then McCulloch, a chainsaw manufacturer. He left his position at McCulloch and founded J.D. Power and Associates on April 1, 1968, working at first from his kitchen table. The company incorporated on February 7, 1969. The "associates" referred to in the firm's title were his wife, who assisted him with market research, and his children, who helped stuff envelopes.
JD Power began surveying car owners about the various attributes of their vehicles. This enabled the company to gather a significant amount of data on how to improve cars, which it used to assist and guide OEMs and car manufacturers to build better cars. In 1973, the company first drew significant national attention when Julia P. Power discovered a design flaw in the O-rings of certain Mazda rotary engines, working from the results of customer surveys. The report was then publicized by The Wall Street Journal and widely repeated in other outlets. In the following years, J.D. Power and Associates became particularly known for its automotive customer satisfaction rankings, while continuing to work in other areas such as food and computers. The firm created the first Dealer Attitude Study in 1976 and the U.S. Automotive Customer Satisfaction Index in 1981.
Subaru paid JD Power to mention the results of their ranking in the JD Power awards in 1984 and became the first company to mention their results in a television commercial, which aired during Super Bowl XVIII. According to JD Power, their rankings have appeared in more than 350,000 television commercial airings and two billion copies of various print advertisements. JD Power expanded its offerings to sell financial and insurance products through car dealerships in 2017.
In 2002, the company moved its headquarters from Agoura Hills, California, to Westlake Village in Ventura County. In 2005, Power retired and sold the firm to McGraw Hill Financial and also resigned as chairman. In September 2016, McGraw Hill (renamed S&P Global Inc. in April 2016) sold JD Power to XIO Group for US $1.1bn. In March 2018, Dave Habiger was named its president and CEO, succeeding Finbarr O'Neill who completed a ten-year tenure. In May 2025, Joshua Peirez was named CEO, succeeding Habiger.
In 2019, JD Power was acquired by Chicago-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo and, as part of this acquisition, JD Power was merged with Autodata Solutions, a provider of data and software for the automotive industry. The combined company's headquarters moved to Troy, Michigan, following the merger.
In September 2023, JD Power announced the takeover of Euro-Australian automotive data company Autovista.
From Wikipedia’s article on J.D. Power, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4