Every time somebody says to "vote with your wallet", there is an implicit command to shut up and stop complaining about the product. The argument goes that the only legitimate way to respond to a product you don't like is to "vote with your wallet" (not buy it), implying that voting against the corporation's practices at the ballot box or on a soap box aren't legitimate. "vote with your wallet" is a fundamentally anti-democratic utterance that attempts to de-legitimize dissenters' participation in government and public discussion.

> There is no -absolutely no- way for anyone in the industry to attribute a lost sale to a "missing" feature.

There's a whole idea around it called market research. It goes as far as... surveying people post-purchase to find out what features became the deciding factors. So yes, it is possible, just with very small sampling rate.

Yes.

Finding out how to attribute a sale to specific features or marketing is definitively possible and common usage.

Finding out why customers churn and what levers could prevent that is also a very common practice.

But finding out why someone _didn't_ buy something in the first place because of a _missing_ feature is just plain and simply impossible.

If you disagree and can prove that I'm wrong, please send me the maths.

It's not math. I've been asked about a purchase while exiting a shop. If they wanted to know why I didn't buy X, they would find out. (or specifically why I bought Y and not X, which covers the missing feature)

I'm happy to give those out for free: I didn't buy oneplus 6t, because it's missing the audio back. <- that wasn't impossible.

Look at it this way. If you enter an Apple Store, see that iPhone doesn't have a audiojack - you leave. There's no record or way of asking you anything.

"Big Box" stores will not question you for the reasons why you bought a Nokia over a OnePlus. Their market research doesn't focus on that. They also don't share customer data with Apple, Nokia or OnePlus.

Neither does Apple have it in their culture to ask, what people want.

How long did it take for Apple to get on contactless payments?

There are countless examples of companies that made a product people didn't want and subsequently went out of business.

So what ?

So voting with my wallet not only works, but it is an order of magnitude more powerful than "regular" voting - where I am not even represented on the political spectrum.

This is just completely delusional