Thing is, this survey probably suggests that your scenario doesn't happen that often. In your example, I'd suspect laundromats tend not to open up right next to each other unless there's adequate demand (e.g., next to a university). And even if they do, washing clothes is not a particularly differentiable product. Sure, maybe one laundromat has machines that always work and a change machine that is well stocked, and the competitor wants to trade on the good name of Quickie Laundromat... but that ruse is only going to work one time, if that.

TFA states that when directly asked about trademarks, "87.2% of businesses reported that trademarks were 'not important' to them." Perhaps most business owners don't know what trademarks are (though that seems a bit unlikely), or perhaps they just don't see value in the formal protection offered by trademark law. Instead they're probably relying on informal branding, reputation, word of mouth, the community, etc. There are certainly intangible aspects here, but they don't require trademark law to function. Trademark law helps deal with disputes, but perhaps those disputes are less likely than we might think.

The article doesn't claim that IP doesn't matter to grocery stores. It just points out that it doesn't make sense to attribute the entire employment figures of all grocery stores across the U.S. to intellectual property. Which is precisely what the Patent Office's report did.

It may be fair to call grocery stores an IP-intensive industry, but if it is, that's a definition of "IP intensive" that most people aren't thinking of when they talk about patent and copyright policy.

No, no one believes that. However, apparently this isn't a big enough concern for most businesses to get them to respond that trademarks are "somewhat" or "very" important. I wonder how realistic the "You've Got Mail" scenario of theft of goodwill for the Shop Around The Corner bookstore actually is.

Well, their reputation may be everything, but I'm guessing many businesses don't even bother filing a trademark registration. I think one of the takeaways from the survey may be that formal intellectual property protection isn't always valuable to most businesses, even though intangible things like reputation may be very valuable.

From TFA:

It is logical... unless you're the U.S. Patent Office, which claims that IP is responsible for 40 million jobs and 35% of the U.S. GDP.

The survey results throw a wrench in the narrative that IP is critical to "the economy." It's clearly critical in certain industries, or for certain companies, but if 90% of businesses say its not important, blanket statements about how IP an economic "engine", etc. need to go.

The problem with this logic is that the survey specifically targets businesses performing R&D. From TFA:

But IP also includes trademarks, which in theory are relevant to virtually every business... unless maybe you supply a purely fungible commodity.

That said, I think you're right. When I considered my experiences with small businesses (a cabinet shop and a veterinary hospital), I realized that not even trademarks were particularly relevant. There was simple no real danger of someone ripping off the name of the business... it wouldn't really make sense to do so.

I'd love to see how politicians and government officials react when confronted with this kind of survey data.

Did our ancestors imagine they were giving the Federal government the right to ban speech?

OF COURSE THEY DID. That's why several of the prominent political ones went to extra lengths in an attempt protect us from it, with their early amendments to the Constitution.