No. I say this because I'm the kind of customer the article is about.

When I'm buying I'm looking for a shoe I am walking around in all day. I'm never going to race. I'm probably not going to play any sports in that shoe. (When I play sports it is usually barefoot at the beach.) I simply don't care about performance. As soon as you try to sell me on performance, I'm ignoring you because it is utterly irrelevant to my life.

I care about comfort, durability, price and aesthetics. Were I single I'd move aesthetics up the list because women do seem to care about how your shoes look. Were my feet easier to fit I might move comfort down the list. I won't believe anything the sales person says about durability, and my decisions on that are the repeat buys where I walk up, name the model, try on a couple of shoes, and walk out. The sales person will have no idea that durability was a factor for me in that decision because I relied on past experience, and not anything that was visible in the store.

The article is exactly right. I simply don't care about any of what the manufacturer is trying to get people to care about. And there is no way of delivering that message that will make me care. I only care about solving my problem, which is keeping my feet protected at relatively low cost per unit time without looking ridiculous.