Consumer perception is extremely important for the food industry, particularly during the first phase of new products’ development and the definition of marketing strategies. A possible approach to understanding consumers’ perception about food products is the application of techniques with qualitative nature. Recently, the food industries has exploited fermented milk due to its technological and functional characteristics associated with beneficial health aspects and acceptability. This study aimed to collect information about consumers’ insights related to different types of fermented milk using the projective technique of Word Association (WA). One hundred participants, recruited by email and social networks, performed an online questionnaire. They were asked to indicate the first four words, phrases, images, associations, or feelings that came to their mind after receiving it stimuli. The stimuli differentiated only by the statement of fermented milk formulations (traditional, probiotic, prebiotic, light, "zero" lactose and organic) was presented in a randomized and balanced way. The results obtained were qualitative analyzed by triangulation, and the terms were grouped into categories, submitted to global chi-square and chi-square per cell test using the software XLSTAT. According to the global chi-square test, participants' perception of products was significantly different (X2 = 1090.7, p = 0.0001). Fourteen categories were identified and the highest frequency of citations for all formulations were "sensory attributes", "healthy" and "marketing" (p <0.05). The chi-square per cell showed that the formulations with probiotic and prebiotic were related to functional aspects, while the “zero” lactose was associated to some kind of health dysfunction. The light one was related to diet and terms highlighting sensory defects were observed. Finally, it can be concluded that WA is a rapid and suitable tool to define the consumer’s perception about products and can be useful to dairy industries in order to create target-marketing strategies.