Where did the competitive advantage of French wineries come from? Insight in the effect of intellectual capital structure on financial performances

The purpose of our study is to examine efficiency of intellectual capital and its components in French wine companies in the manner of financial performance improvement. We included 548 French wine large size companies in an empirical examination in the period 2015 to 2019. The financial information was obtained from the financial database “Diane” provided by Bureau Van Dijk, Moody’s analytics company. The model used in this study is the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient - VAIC™ developed by Pulic (2000). This model investigates the efficiency of intellectual capital on the financial performance within French wine companies. The efficiency of intellectual capital and its components impact both on operating profit and net income. Human Capital Efficiency (HCE) influences positively on operating profit and net income with its coefficients 0.003579 and 0.003366 respectively. Capital Employed Efficiency (CEE) has similar results with the positive impacts on operating profit and net income with coefficients 0.1953281 and 0.0012821. On the other hand, Structural Capital Efficiency (SCE) influences negatively on the financial performance, -0.012661 and - 0.02107 respectively. In total, Value Added Intellectual Capital (VAIC) impacts positively on the French wine companies’ financial results with coefficients 0.0038764 and 0.0032488. These results prove that French wine companies are intellectual-capital intensive and that the creation of competitive advantage is based on the knowledge and expertise in the field they operate. This study confirms that French wine companies create values and competitive advantage coming from its companies’ knowledge that is seen as intellectual capital.