> It would just as likely or even more likely be something like personal wealth maximization by an employee or group of employees, personal relationship improvement, ego gratification, maintaining/improving social standing, effort minimization, etc.

Do you have any evidence for this?

> I think you grossly overestimate the ability of most large businesses to behave rationally form an organizational profit maximization perspective.

You're free to think this but it doesn't really square with common sense. Profit maximization is a stated goal of large orgs, and by definition they're doing ok at it.

In any case, your comment does nothing to diminish OP's point: that the shape of the demand matters. What the shape of the demand is in this case is an empirical question and you haven't provided any evidence.