# Stores and channels

A store selects the commerce context for a buying experience.
Channels let you share or separate its catalog, prices, and inventory.
This is useful when several storefronts sell the same products but have different prices or fulfillment sources.

## Three channel responsibilities

| Flag | What the channel connects |
| --- | --- |
| `DISTRIBUTION` | Product and variant publications |
| `PRICE` | Variant price records |
| `SUPPLY` | Inventory entries |

A channel can have more than one flag.
Separate channels are useful when these responsibilities change independently.
A store has `distributionChannels`, `priceChannels`, and `supplyChannels` lists, plus price and tax rounding defaults.

## Decide what is shared

Two stores can share product publications while using separate price lists.
They can also share a supply channel when both sell stock from the same source.
Separate the supply channels when stock is managed independently.

For example, your Denmark and Sweden storefronts may share the lamp catalog but request different currencies.
Whether they need separate price channels depends on how you manage their price records, not just their country names.
A country is a request-context value, not automatically a store or channel.

## Configuration is not request context

Configure which channels a store uses through Admin.
Then send the intended `storeId`, price channel, currency, and country with Storefront operations.
Keep that context consistent through checkout.
Changing a currency formatter does not select a new price.

Start with [Configure a store](/guides/catalog/configure-store).
For application state and caching, read [Storefront request context](/concepts/storefront/request-context).