Global marketing firm J.D. Power and Associates has been successfully influencing consumers on what products to purchase for more than 45 years.
But the Westlake Village-headquartered company has come a long way to producing customer satisfaction and merchandise quality surveys across 12 industries with offices throughout the United States, the Asia Pacific region, Europe, South America, Canada and Mexico.
J.D. "Dave" Power III founded the company sitting at his Calabasas kitchen table in 1968, less than 10 years after earning his graduate degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Power had been working in Los Angeles for a few years when he ran into a roommate from Wharton who had just quit his job at General Electric and — with two other young professionals — planned to start his own company.
Power said, "You've got to be crazy ... You're giving up good jobs with good companies and you've got your families."
But his friend's perspective intrigued Power.
He told Power that "the big danger for an employee out of graduate school is that he spends his time taking steps up the ladder and before he knows it is a captive of the company ... if this doesn't work out, we'll find another job.' "
That night Power went home and told his wife about the conversation. She encouraged him to take the same path and start his own company, so that's exactly what he did.
With three young children and a fourth not far away, Power said he left his job with Marplan, the research arm of advertising agency McCann-Erickson, to provide better "market research than what the industry was providing to their clients."
"They weren't doing the right kind of research, they weren't listening and they were directing it so it would come back with data that was just what they wanted to hear," Power said. "We saw real weakness in that."
During the company's first few months of operation and with a staff of about 12 employees, the firm landed its first automobile client — a Japanese car company newly headquartered in the Los Angeles area that was seeking research on how to market cars to Americans.
After persistent phone calls and unscheduled office visits, Power was introduced to Tatsuro Toyoda, the Japanese executive in charge of Toyota's automotive division and son of the Toyota Motor Corp. founder.
Not much time passed before Power looked to expand.
"We were becoming so dependent on Toyota," Power said. "It would be 75 percent of our revenue, 100 percent of our profits and about 150 percent of my time. We had to do something different."
INDEPENDENCE
The company decided to produce its own study on the Mazda rotary engine, which Power said was "the hottest product in 1972" and "the fastest growing import ever in the United States." J.D. Power and Associates would own the data, so it could sell the results to any automobile firm, instead of doing research for one company within the industry.
"We did 2,000 mailings and before we knew it we had a over 50 percent response rate — it was a big success and we owned the data," Power said. "This is the first-time that we felt free to do what we wanted to do and we sold it to all of the car companies that wanted it."
The study yielded more than anticipated. Power's wife, who did much of the tabulations, discovered that after 30,000 miles, one out of five users reported a specific part of the engine started to fail.
After the report was leaked to The Wall Street Journal, J.D. Power and Associates quickly garnered national media attention for its highlight of the problem.
Power "did things that improved the automobiles that we all drive today," said Ernie Pomerantz, who served on the company's board from 1999 to 2005.
"It was his real diligence and thoughtfulness about surveying the consumer that generated so much information for the manufacturers that forced them to make improvements more quickly than they otherwise would have," Pomerantz said.
Pomerantz, current chairman of Stonewater Capital LLC in New York City, said he met Power in 1990 while he was making investments in the automobile industry on behalf of a private equity firm.
He "was just amazingly well-respected and well-liked," Pomerantz said. "It didn't matter whether it was Ford or Chevrolet or Chrysler or Toyota — everyone talked the world of him and respected him and that's not easy to do in a competitive industry."
J.D. Power and Associates expanded far beyond automotive, permeating industries including travel, home improvement, retail and product, health care, travel and leisure, energy, financial services, real estate, telecommunications, insurance and homes.
As the company grew, Power made a conscious effort to maintain his business ethics based on integrity, independence and impact.
The native of Worcester, Mass., said much of his character was developed as an undergraduate student studying English at College of the Holy Cross in his hometown.
"My education in college was to teach you how to live a life, whereas when I went to graduate school, I was taught how to earn a living," Power said.
Power said he was inspired by William Shakespeare and quoted an excerpt from Hamlet, when Polonius advises his son Laertes, to "'Above all: to thine ownself be true.'"
"If you're not true to yourself, you're not going to be true to much of anything else," Power added.
FAMILY BUSINESS
Whether it was his wife calculating data results or children stuffing envelopes with surveys and later joining the company as adults, Power strived to maintain a family-oriented environment — even with around 700 employees by the time he sold the company in 2005 to McGraw Hill Financial.
"We treated everyone like family," he said "It was truly a family business — it wasn't just my wife and the four children, it was anyone that came in and I think that's almost a unique situation to have and it attracted more people that were interested in that kind of environment."
Linda Hirneise was one of those people. Before being asked to join J.D. Power and Associates, Hirneise was a business teacher at Westlake High School, where she taught several of the Power children and was introduced to the company's founder as she invited local business leaders to speak to her students.
"He's an entrepreneur who always aspired to independence, creativity and excellence," said Hirneise, who stayed at the company for 26 years. "The world needs more Dave Power's. There's just not enough — from a personal and professional point of view."
While Power retired from J.D. Power and Associates in 2008, he continues — at 82 years old — to share his story with the public — whether it's members of the Conejo Valley community, where he has been a resident since 1975, or students across the country. A biography of the business leader was published in 2013.
Peter Marlow, current vice president and general manager for corporate communications and marketing, said he views Power as his mentor and has aimed to "continue the legacy that he established and stick to the values that he put in place"
"There's no sugar coating, you tell it like it is — that was the maxim of the organization and his actions reflected that," Marlow said. "The reason why the brand continues to grow in influence is because the business community, with the media and the consumers, realize that this is an unfiltered voice."