Information on animal welfare and ways that farm animals are kept has gained more and more importance with regard to the consumers' behaviour and expectations when buying food products. In certain countries, animal welfare is considered as an important extrinsic quality attribute of animal products. Until now, hardly any studies have been conducted in Latin America on consumers' expectations and knowledge regarding animal welfare aspects of the products they buy. The objective of this study was to determine the knowledge and expectations of consumers in Chile regarding information about dairy production systems and animal welfare, and the main aspects they considered when buying dairy products. A face-to-face interview was conducted on a sample of 501 persons from the Province of Santiago, Chile. The survey was conducted in major supermarkets from 15 different municipalities of Santiago in November and December 2012. The main aspects considered before purchasing dairy products were fat content (30%) and price (26%). It was shown that 66.9% of the participants associated the term animal welfare with responsible pet ownership, 12.4% to farm animal care, 11.6% to vegetarianism and 9.2% to the freedom and nature of animals. Age, educational level and family income were related (P < 0.001) to responsible pet ownership whereas gender did not relate to the concept of animal welfare. From the total surveyed participants, 73% were interested in receiving more information about animal welfare; 62% of these were women between 18 and 30 years of age. Information about the conditions of milk production and animal welfare were considered to be an important aspect to be included in dairy products' labelling for 86% of the participants. Also, 68% of the participants declared a willingness to pay more for an animal welfare friendly dairy product. Data from this study may be useful in order to include animal welfare as an extrinsic quality attribute of dairy products in Chile and to define a market-oriented strategy including animal welfare.