An Analysis of the General Demand Function
Applied to the Changes in the Financial Services Industry
This paper will discuss the theory of the General Demand Function as it applies to the financial services industry (Maurice & Thomas, 1995, 15) . Part I, Definitions, will clarify the focus of the discussion. Part II, Data, will present the data accumulations connected with the industry, particularly the number of producers and the way the industry generates its profits. Part III, Production Volume of Major Producers, will summarize both the way production is measured and how it is determined. Part IV, Market Share of Major Producers, and Part V, Conclusions, will feature the conclusions based on this study.
Before any meaningful discussion of the General Demand Function, can begin, it is necessary to define the terms of the two major variables: the nature of the financial services industry and the meaning of the General Demand Function. Therefore, it is relevant to define the financial services industry at this moment in time. It has been called a behemoth with five million employees and $16 trillion in assets by Szabo (1994), and the current thinking regarding the industry is that it will be influenced by three critical factors over the next twenty years -- demographics, technology, and consumer expectations. These three factors will have a pressured increase on the concept that Maurice & Thomas' discussion in Chapter 2 expresses. They state that "the amount of a good or services that consumers in a market are willing to purchase during a given period of time is called quantity demanded" (15). Using the quantity demanded framework, it is apparent that the financial service industry operates within the sub-definition of "ordinary demand functions," which implies that there is a "relation between the quantity demanded and the price of the product when all variables affecting demand are held constant at specific v...