| Telegram & Gazette
J.D. Power III, the Worcester-born founder of the noted consumer research company, has passed away, according to his company.
Power, 89, died Saturday.
He built J.D. Power and Associates into a credible and much-cited publisher of customer satisfaction rankings, notably for the automobile industry. The company is based in Michigan.
James David Power III grew up on Wakefield Street in Worcester. His father taught English for 44 years at Worcester Boys Trade High School.
He graduated from St. Peter’s High School and the College of the Holy Cross before earning an MBA from the Wharton School. He worked in the auto industry, eventually starting his own business conducting research in the late 1960s.
In a 1991 interview with the Sunday Telegram, Power recalled his boyhood days of delivering the Evening Gazette in Worcester. He traced his interest in customer attitudes to that time.
“In those days, I had to go out and collect the money,” he told a reporter. “I would have to interact with about 125 customers. We would have weekly exchanges, whether about the weather, the delivery, whatever. I found a wide variety of consumers at that time.”
One hot, midsummer day he went to the corner store and got a chocolate milkshake for a subscriber who was unable to get to the store herself.
“I vividly remember that,” he said, an early opportunity to act on his belief in customer service.
