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During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic lockdowns, stay at home or work from home, many have argued that the westernised non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) do not provide remedial in low-income countries like Nigeria, where informal job seekers, street traders, informal labourers and artisans depend mainly on the informal economy. By applying social solidarity (SS) and community-based approach (CBA), the authors evaluate individual acts (trust, altruism and reciprocity) during the lockdown and how these practices evolve from individual approaches to collective actions.

This study reflects on pragmatism research paradigm that enables researchers to maintain both subjectivity in their reflections and objectivity in data collection and analysis. The authors adopt a qualitative method through purposeful and convenience sampling procedure. Data were analysed thematically to identify elements of SS, individual acts, collective or community actions and perceptions.

The findings reveal that COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact (lack of food and a fall in daily income) on workers, informal job seekers, informal businesses operators and the poor households. As such, the study developed a reflective model of solidarity exhibited by individual acts and collective acts (practices of resource pooling, information sharing, women empowerment, distribution of palliatives and donations) within trusted circles that helped people cope with the lockdown experiences.

Solidarity represents beliefs, practices of values and norms. The SS exhibited by people through NPI would have implications on planning and monitoring the effectiveness of public health programmes during a pandemic in the future.

The findings of citizens and community actions have implications related to the process of building communities – coming together – and solidarity that enhances social development with implications on community health policy agenda during disasters, emergencies and health pandemic.

This is one of the first studies to analyse the relationship between trust, altruism, reciprocity, SS and CBA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it seems reasonable to clarify the concept of SS given the lack of clarity about the definitions from previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the linkages between the determinants of relationship marketing and the behavioural component of these determinants within a non-Western retail stores setting.

A quantitative approach was employed, using 19-item, seven-point Likert scaled questionnaire administered to 350 participants with 67 per cent usable response rate. Data was analysed using exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s α internal consistency; correlation analysis and One-Way Analysis of Variance test.

Trust-Quality services emerged as the most outstanding determinant of relationship marketing within the retail stores context followed by relational orientation, commitment and proximity. Quality services were found to have the most significant positive impact on trust whereas trust was found to have a strong positive impact on commitment. Relational orientation was found to have a strong positive impact on trust, commitment and quality services but proximity was found to be a docile factor determining commitment and relational orientation. Finally, consumers were identified as being more relationally oriented than retailers and all categories of consumers can be served with same blend of relationship marketing strategies.

Since findings could not be generalized across other sectors and regions, guides for testing the proposed research model are put forward.

Relationship marketing implementation within the context of retail stores will be more successful if based on delivery of quality services. Consumers are also more likely to patronize closer than distant retail stores. As such, even if retail firms build strong trust, commitment and relational orientation with customers through quality services, consumers will still patronize stores that are closer to them more than stores in distant locations. Siting retail stores in locations with the largest pool of customers’ is therefore central to enhancing retail stores performance. All categories of customers could be served with same stream of relationship marketing strategies because designing different schemes of relationship marketing programmes for different customer categories were found to be counter-productive.

This paper identified 16 attributes that are important to consumers under four dimensions: Trust-Quality services, relational orientation, commitment and proximity within the retail stores context. The findings are acknowledged to be unique because they emerged from a largely under-researched collectivistic emerging market where relationship marketing formation is key.