Luxury Brands as Cultural Actors. Heritage, Creative Cities, and Tourism Ecosystems in the Luxury Economy

Luxury brands are increasingly operating at the intersection of cultural production, heritage valorisation, and tourism development within global creative cities. Moving beyond their traditional role as producers of high-end goods, they act as culturally embedded actors that mobilise heritage resources and artification strategies to generate symbolic value and institutional legitimacy. This paper examines how luxury brands integrate intangible cultural heritage into branding practices and how these processes contribute to the development of tourism ecosystems. Adopting an institutional and cultural perspective, the study conceptualises luxury brands as actors embedded in networks of cultural production, symbolic legitimisation, and destination development. A qualitative multiple case study approach is employed, focusing on two Italian firms— Buccellati and Molteni Group— to illustrate heritage-based branding practices. The findings show that heritage serves as an institutionalised organisational resource, embedded in archives, museums, and structured cultural practices, while artification functions as a mechanism for constructing legitimacy at the field level, aligning brands with institutionalised cultural frameworks. Furthermore, corporate cultural spaces and heritage initiatives enhance the symbolic appeal of creative cities and contribute to the development of tourism ecosystems. This study makes three key contributions to the literature: (1) it reconceptualises intangible cultural heritage as an institutional resource; (2) it advances the understanding of artification as a mechanism of legitimacy construction; and (3) it bridges luxury branding and tourism research through an ecosystem-based perspective. In doing so, it positions luxury brands as cultural mediators operating between cultural production and destination development.