Because of increase in the competing pressure in the wine industry, French companies wonder about the strategies to adopt to defend their competitive position. The strategic axes considered, development of a market orientation, increase in research development and commercial expenditure, recruitment and training of qualified personnel are characterized by the creation and development of an intangible capital.

The objective of paper is in a first stage to measure the importance of intangible expenses and capital and to connect them to the companies’ performances in order to check if intangibility plays a part in the performance level. Then, in a second stage, we will analyze the factors which determine the intensity of the relation between intangibility and performance: structure of property (co-operative, other legal structures), type of wine (AOC, local wine…), nature of the business (trader, winemaker…), size…

The paper tests empirically the previous relations with the help of an enquiry “Enquête Entreprises Aval filière Vin – Agro.M – Viniflhor, CCVF, EGVF” carried out by the School of Agronomy of Montpellier (ENSAM) in 2005-2006. This data base gathers questionnaire data and financial statements relating to 214 companies whose activity includes one or more stages in the production and marketing of wine. We find evidence of a negative impact of intangible proxies on firm economic performance measures and a positive impact on commercial performance for low or medium values of intangible ratios.