I've never seen someone even mention the word normalization when working with databases, but the knowledge is useful to intuitively design more sensible tables. Perhaps many people don't realize they are doing it?
I know I didn't until I took a database class in grad school. (I'd worked with databases before and was taught them as a kid by my dad, but I needed some kind of 'proof' for CV purposes). I didn't call it 'normalization', I just considered it to be part of future-proofing/not wanting to be bothered if new uses showed up.