system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do brands sell chips for 3 or 4 or 5 dollars in normal stores, but in dollar/value shops, they are sold for a dollar for the same brand and size bag?
gpt
It is not the brands that decide the price. It's the store owners. Supermarkets and value stores have different business strategies, and the margin they try to make on a product is different.

First, what is margin. Margin is the amount of profit a retailer (like a supermarket) wants to make on a product. Retailers have contracts with suppliers to sell their items. They will buy the item at a certain price from the manufacturer, then sell it to customers at a higher price. The difference between the price they paid and the price you paid is the margin and that is where the retailers make their money.

So basically what happens is Chips Manufacturer will sell their chips to both supermarkets and value stores at, say, 50 cents per bag. A value store that sells that bag of chips for one dollar makes 50 cents worth of profit on each bag; a supermarket that sells that bag of chips for two dollars makes 1.50 worth of profit on each bag.  

What sort of margin stores decide with often differs from product to product, but in general is determined by their business strategy.

A dollar store basically makes their profit from selling large quantities. They go for a low margin on each product, and they only make a bit of profit, but they try and make up for that by selling a lot. They also try to keep their costs low by doing things like keeping their shop layout very simple, not having a lot of staff, not offering speciality items, offering a lot of no-brand items. 

Supermarkets often go with a different strategy. Compared to dollar stores, they aren't trying to be the cheapest, they are trying to offer a better overall shopping experience. This can be because of ease of shopping, helpful staff, the assortment they offer. But hey, all those things need to be paid for as well. So they charge a higher margin on products.