The first childhood is fundamental for the physical and psychological development of human beings, influencing them for the rest of their lives. In this way, offering adequate child care services, based in a correct mapping of customers’ necessities is extremely important. Derived from this motivation, this work aims to analyze the relevant characteristics for parents in the child care services selection process. The dissertation is based on conjoint analysis methodology and is developed in two parts: i. Literature revision, interviews, focus groups and definition of the stimulus to be evaluated by the respondents; ii. Data collection, calculation of the relative importance of the attributes, calculation of the utilities of each suggested level and analyses of the results. The analysis is done considering not only the total sample but also segments defined according to socio-economical data gathered as part of the data collection process. The result of the conjoint analysis for the overall sample reveals that location, teaching methodology and professional knowledge and skills received the greatest relative importance. It shows that, far beyond a practical child care service that can look after their children, parents are aiming for an institution that leverages development, socialization and learning. When segmenting the data, analyses by neighborhood, children’s age and familiar income enabled the definition of strategies for each specific segment.