I would guess the store is very aggressive in the pricing it expects from the suppliers, so the owners of the Duracell trademark, to meet that price point, simply use the cheapest OEM manufacturer to make the batteries for that chain, and then ship them by the cheapest shipping method, likely taking 8 weeks or more to travel port to port, and then gets handled only as low priority cargo, so sits cooking for a long time.
As to storing in a fridge, in the military the stores had a few display fridges, which were expressly there to store batteries, as they otherwise would fail in under 6 months in the stores, where your inside temperature could easily exceed 70C on the weekends when all the doors and windows were closed. They also were used to keep things like film and photographic paper, as film was still used, both for the hospital on base, and for other purposes, along with holding all the developer chemicals for the film, sealed in plastic bags individually per pack. Another few were just used to hold rubber parts, so they would not degrade, as the stores otherwise were not air conditioned, as most things were able to survive the temperature. Only place with AC running 24/7 was the aircraft tyre store, as they could keep infrequently required tyres and parts for many years between uses, and that was always locked.