If Ms listened to their customers we'd never have got XP, and we'd probably have never got 95.
Win95 was the first one to actually do a decent ripoff of the System 7 UI. Most customers back then were grateful for this, as it uncluttered the screen compared to 3.1's Program Manager. (Incidentally, Metro looks like a return to that clutter with the Start screen!)
XP worked fine, deactivating the Luna UI could be done as well though I never saw the point of doing so. It didn't interfere with the UI, unlike TIFKAM.
touch-screen mobiles were resisted too.
You talk like this is something of the past. It isn't, some of us still resist touchscreen smartphones.
MS did the research, most of the feedback was "get rid of this toy thing" so they discarded it and pushed it on anyway. They even went for the nuclear option, killing the ability of deactivating Metro in the RC version...