GoAutoNews Premium has been told the move will see the end of the company’s famous consumer surveys in Australia and throughout the ASEAN region including Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.

These syndicated surveys, where JD Power does the research and then sells the detailed results to interested parties, mainly car-makers, are to be wound down by the middle of 2020 – including the Australian Customer Service Index (CSI) and Sales Satisfaction Index (SSI) studies.

The company will consider undertaking research in these markets for a specific client providing the commission is profitable.

Under the new arrangements, JD Power will focus on China and Japan.

It will close its Bangkok and Singapore offices in the second quarter of 2020 once current client projects are completed with all existing and new proprietary and consulting projects to be managed from offices in the United States, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai.

JD Power Australia, which was set up a year ago and has been run for the past 12 months by former Toyota Australia executive Bruce Chellingworth, will be closed and Mr Chellingworth will finish up at the end of December.

Darren Slind, region president South Asia, ASEAN and Oceania, said in a letter to clients: “While we are scaling back our physical presence in ASEAN, India, Taiwan and Australia, we are not exiting these important automotive markets. We will continue to have JD Power industry experts available throughout the region as needed on a regular basis.

“In order to maximise the value of our data, analytics and critical industry intelligence, we have made the decision to refocus our work in the region.

“This will mean significant investment in our digital data collection and analysis tools, and a pivot toward areas of growing demand from our clients such as digital retailing, connected vehicle data analytics, vehicle electrification and vehicle automation.

“Throughout our global operations, our modernised data, analytics and workflow capabilities are making it possible to deliver more accurate and meaningful insights faster and more affordably than ever before.

“We feel that now is the optimal time to focus on these tasks in order to bring the value to our clients as quickly as possible,” Mr Slind said.

By John Mellor