The movie market produces unique and incommensurable products, where consumers rely on various judgment devices to acquire knowledge and make choices. At the same time, the market encompasses movies spanning diverse genres. Drawing upon Karpik’s (2010) theory of the economics of singularities and a recent empirical study by Schmidt (2020), this study employs a factorial survey to investigate the role of four judgment devices in predicting the likelihood of going to the cinema to watch a particular movie across four genres: romance, sci-fi, documentary and horror — genres distinguished by their varying levels of stratification and popularity. The vignettes in this study present movie offers as images depicting either low, middle or high ratings by movie experts, broad users and peers as well as personal recommendations from close friends, parents or neither.

First, the results reveal that personal recommendation by close friends, rather than parents, holds the highest significance regardless of the genre. Second, the ratings by experts, users and peers also emerge as positive predictors, the gain from each rating's increase from the middle level to the highest level is greater than the loss from a decrease from the middle level to the lowest level. Third, the orientation on specific judgment devices can depend on individual characteristics (e.g., trust in family and friends, genre preferences and the level of cultural omnivorousness).

This study illustrates the peculiarities of movie consumption, underlining the multifaceted interplay between judgment devices, individual characteristics, and genre-specific characteristics.