The critical trade-off: identity assignment and box-office success in the feature film industry

Researchers have begun to study markets that are structured in terms of an opposition between market identities in a manner akin to the role-pairs analyzed in structural role theory. In this paper, we analyze the feature film market, which came to have such a role structure by the mid-1990s. By exploiting the contingency that pertains to the identity of newly released films and the intermediary function played by critics, we assess the tendency for offerings to be assigned one or the other of the available market identities: independent or major. An analysis of the box-office success of 396 feature films released in 1997 shows that a film attracted a larger audience when critics who specialized in major releases reviewed the film and implicitly certified it as fit for the mass market. Such classification was particularly crucial for 'breaking out' of the initial constraints set by theatrical exhibitors. However, while attaining a major identity was necessary for success in the mass market, it was a handicap in penetrating the 'art house'. This trade-off illustrates how market structures restrict identity in a manner akin that by which role structures place constraints on the identities available to individuals. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.