What's the deal with barcodes on merchandise packaging?

The bar code is of course for the computer to recognize. Each product has a different bar code, through the bar code recognition equipment, the computer can immediately know his name, price,

Domestic general use of the British system 13-bit bar code, the first 8 bits of this bar code is the company code to 8 the same number of the beginning of the product is certainly a company; 9/10/11/12 bit for the product code, the company (manufacturer) ...) can use these digits arbitrarily for their own product number, the last digit is automatically generated by the computer, can not be manually altered.