WWF did in fact listen to its fans and sponsors considering Hulk Hogan propelled over Sgt. Slaughter because we all know Sgt. Slaughter was originally chosen to be the face of WWE, but then the fans loved Hogan way more. At a PPV in the late 80's or early 90's you had Ultimate Warrior bail on a ppv, and guess who Plan B was?, it was Mr. Perfect, and Vince sent him out there. Eventually, WWF internally promoted Lex Luger and tried to portray him as the next face of WWE, but fans chose Bret Hart over Luger. In the Attitude Era you had WWF trying desperately to promote HHH and HBK as the next faces of WWF, but Stone Cold, Mankind, The Rock, excelled far more than expectations and WWE for a couple of years knew this was their answer to WCW. Obviously, in 2001 we started seeing HHH emerge as the new face of WWE. 2001 is the start of excessive politics in WWE.
Since 2003, WWE has been promoting who they want you to chant for. I remember a Raw after Stone Cold, The Rock, Mick Foley were pretty much gone from full-time wrestling where Vince came out and said something along the lines of "I tell you what you want when I want to!"
WWE used to recognize that if Plan A doesn't work, you can promote Plan B that will become just as good or even better than Plan A. The exception to the norm is when Jake revealed that he was becoming more popular than Hulk Hogan at one point, and Vince forced a stop to that because WWF had spent so much money on marketing Hogan after Slaughter that there was not much money or time to heavily promote Jake the Snake in comparison
I am not sure who Sandow, Ryder, Barrett had pissed off over the past 5 years, but it's not hard to figure out who to blame knowing that WWF used to promote their talents that won the crowd over. Back then you could have "organically" gotten over and became champion (I.C/World/Heavyweight). Not so much anymore, and I blame the backstage politics, including the idiot who easily gets jealous of talents that had more potential than him, only for him to easily derail their momentum.