Product review length has been demonstrated as one of the key factors that influence the product review helpfulness. However, we have little knowledge of a deeper understanding on how consumers process the product review length to assess product review helpfulness. Anchoring on the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making and the prominent coping approaches, this research revisits this key issue from consumers’ affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing perspective. Our findings show that (1) consumers apply both the affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing to assess the helpfulness of product review, (2) a significant inverted U-shape relationship between the review length and the review helpfulness, and interestingly, (3) such a relationship is further moderated by whether the product review author has provided a response to consumers’ comments. These findings not only provide further robust evidence to the consideration of both product review length and feedback, but also suggest a refinement of the underlying mechanism on how consumers process product review length to assess product review helpfulness.

产品评论的长度已被证明是影响产品评论有用性的关键因素之一。但是，我们对消费者如何处理产品评论时长以评估产品评论有用性的了解很少。本研究以人类的情感决策模型和突出的应对方法为基础，从消费者的情感导向和认知导向的加工角度重新审视了这一关键问题。我们的发现表明：（1）消费者同时使用面向情感和面向认知的过程来评估产品评论的有用性；（2）评论长度和评论有用性之间存在显着的倒U型关系，有趣的是，（3）通过产品评论作者是否提供了对消费者评论的回复，进一步缓和了这种关系。这些发现不仅为考虑产品评论时长和反馈提供了进一步的有力证据，而且还建议完善有关消费者如何处理产品评论时长以评估产品评论有用性的基本机制。