Background: This study aimed to identify dental patient’s expectations and segmenting of dental patients according to their expectations.  Identifying the needs and expectations of patients can lead to more satisfactory dental services and promote the financial interest of dental offices. This study attempts to extract the needs and expectations and then segments patients according to needs and expectations.

Methods: Due to the compound exploratory nature of this study, in order to collect qualitative data, discussion with 20 patients was done on the basis of data quality (theoretical data saturation) and depth interviews were arranged. Then by using content analysis of the type "theme analysis" we tried to extract the dental needs and expectations of the interviews. In quantitative data after the verification of validity and reliability of questionnaire, we distributed the questionnaires to 120 dental patients. Finally, 120 questionnaires were considered for the final analysis. Data were analyzed by using software SPSS 20. Then three levels of analysis, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and Tree cluster analysis were performed.

The first part describes the demographic features of members on the qualitative sample. After alluding to the Check list of questions and points to some of the verbal predicate and codes that were extracted from the interviews, descriptive statistics were presented in the original aspect and detail. Finally, the demographic features of the members of the quantitative sample described and then ANOVA test and Cluster analysis were used to answer the research questions.

Findings: indicated that there were 6 codes for expectations, including: access, person, service, finance, speed and environment. By using cluster analysis, divided into 3 clusters. At the end of the study, practical offers, research limitations and suggestions for future research are presented.

Conclusion: Determining the needs and expectations of patients would lead to more satisfaction of patients.

Keywords: service, service quality, dental office, expectation, patient, segmentation