Playground →
The News & Observer sits at the top of Harris Teeter's neighbor set with a similarity of 0.87 — the strongest pull in the top 10, and it belongs to a completely different category than any grocery brand. That cross-kind signal sets the tone for the whole cluster.
The shape is broad: eight of the top 10 neighbors score above 0.69, with no sharp drop-off between them. After The News & Observer (0.87), the next closest is athlete Greg Olsen at 0.79, followed by restaurant brand Bojangles at 0.74, magazine Southern Living at 0.72, and radio/podcast outlet The Bert Show at 0.72. Rounding out the top 10 are utility Duke Energy (0.71), brewery SweetWater Brewery (0.71), politician Tim Scott (0.69), destination brand Busch Gardens VA (0.69), and news publisher First Coast News (0.67).
Tallying the subcategories across the top 10 reveals a distinctly regional, Southeastern character: two News Publishers, one Athlete, one Restaurant brand, one Magazine, one Podcasts and Radio outlet, one utility (Other), one Brewery, one Politician, and one Destinations brand. Not one other Grocery and Superstores entity appears in the top 10. The audience Harris Teeter shares most closely is shaped less by grocery competitors than by the media, personalities, and brands that define the Carolinas and broader Southeast.
That breadth — spanning local news, regional lifestyle media, sports figures, and service brands — points to an audience defined by place and community rather than by shopping category.
