[sukuriant]

An easy way to find out the answer would be to go purchase one thing from Store A and the same thing from Store B. You can rule out at least one possibility from there :)

I'll give you a hint, though: you can scan a barcode with your phone and compare prices :)

[havoc2005]

Good advice. But where can I find out what company distributes the bar codes?

[sukuriant]

You really should have google'd this.

A single search: "Who designates bar codes?" yielded this as the top result: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080517170020AA...