The objective is to investigate how vertical integration is used to get close customers contactand increase customer relations in the printing industry and to explore the competitiveconsequences with vertical integration towards the customers. The paper is based on aquantitative survey study of the Swedish commercial printing industry and qualitativeinterviews with five printing firms. Results show that it is common to integrate contentcreation in the studied industry. This is primarily done to increase relations with directcustomers and increase profitability, since direct customers are perceived as more loyal andprofitable than customers, such as advertising agencies and print brokers. However,production sold to direct customers still only constitutes a small part of the total production atthe interviewed printing firms. Furthermore, the integration of content creation gives rise to apotentially competitive situation with the advertising agency customer segment. This problemis recognized by printing firms as they try to avoid competition with these customers. Thiscan be done by e.g. performing only simpler jobs that advertising agencies not are interestedin or isolating content creation in a separate firm and consequently both compete withadvertising agencies and still be a printing firm to these customers.