The essence of differentiation is to convince the client that the product or service offered by an organization possesses features which make it substantially better than other products available in the market.

In the paper, the authors present four basic areas of differentiation, and illustrate the argument with examples from the banking practice. They hold that differentiation strategy helps a bank achieve a quasi-monopolistic position in a given market, since the client himself restricts the choice to the one organization which, in his perception, offers proper quality standards. The authors indicate the importance of quality in reducing the risk of purchase. They also address the issue of the image of a bank as an element of its strategy of quality.

When analyzing the link between quality and a bank´s market image, the authors state the following: firstly, the image results form the quality of the services offered; secondly, the quality of any operation performed by the bank should conform with its image.