Anecdotally, from the inside of some larger organizations I've never seen a request for such leeway from a smaller company used legitimately.

It has either been simple ego or a sort of test to gauge just how far the small company is willing to compromise itself.

>"The small company marshals all its resources to create a detailed proposal (requirements, SWOT, etc.) which, when completed, ends up as an RFP that goes out to a dozen vendors, or maybe just to threaten their existing vendor with some fake competition."

Yep, this is Procurement 101. I've seen folks who are too lazy to bother doing a cursory search and replace to clean up the vendor name and logos.