&gt; Frankly, it was Sam&#x27;s Club that really surprised me since I always assumed that they offered everything at a lower price as a perk built in for membership.<p>As a general rule, <i>anytime</i> an institution [0] has an established reputation for lower prices such that people assume their prices are lower without doing comparisons, this becomes a license to charge higher prices.<p>[0] this is true beyond just institutions, too; &quot;economy&quot; packs of products frequently sell for higher per-unit costs than packs with fewer units per pack, because enough people assume that the cost is lower and don&#x27;t do the math.