"voting with money" or "voting with your wallet" is a complete non-sense. There is no -absolutely no- way for anyone in the industry to attribute a lost sale to a "missing" feature.
I think this also a symptoms on how Americans view the world through means of consumption. Everything HAS TO be consumed one way or another.
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.
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.
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.
"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?