Vertical integration is a business strategy that involves controlling or owning companies that are in different parts of the production process or value chain of a product. Many authors also use the terms concentration, growth, diversification, and expansion to refer to integration. This is not an exclusively communication-centered strategy, but rather a global one, being used in different industrial sectors. The global phenomenon that included vertical integration and other types of business strategies and behaviors was known as industrialization of communications and culture and has been studied by various theoretical perspectives grouped together as economy of communications and culture.

This entry provides an overview of vertical integration, including its definition, an explanation of the context in which business strategies are applied in the communications field, and ...