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SAN DIEGO — Gateway Inc. shuttered 27 of its stores around the country this week as part of a broad strategy to improve the bottom line at the nation’s fourth-largest computer maker, company officials said Thursday. 

About 500 Gateway Country Store employees were notified Monday that the stores they worked in were closing immediately. They will be offered jobs elsewhere within the company, said Bart Brown, senior vice president of the company’s consumer division. 

“This is just part of our back-to-the-basics strategy,” Brown said. “We determined we could maintain the same coverage with fewer stores.” 

Nine of the closing stores are in California, with all but one in the greater Los Angeles area. Three stores are in Virginia; two each in Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas; and one each in Georgia, Indiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Utah. 

The 299 remaining stores are a key part of the company’s mission of “humanizing the digital revolution.” Shoppers enter a welcoming environment decorated with the company’s trademark cow spots where they can try out Gateway products. Free training clinics are offered to help users beef up their computer skills. 

“It’s all about customer satisfaction,” Gateway spokesman Brad Williams said. “That’s what built our company up more than any advertising campaign.” 

Brett Miller, an analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons, remains a fan of the stores, but applauded the closures, saying the company had oversaturated large metropolitan areas. 

“The store is a wonderful concept,” he said, offering a unique relationship with the customer. “Every store I’m in – and I’m in quite a few –I’m seeing people who know the person behind the counter on a first-name basis,” Miller said. 

The closures come after Gateway’s stock took a beating since July, falling more than 75 percent. While investors have been fleeing technology stocks, Gateway’s shares fell harder than any of its larger rivals – Hewlett-Packard Co., Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp. 

Investors felt the company lost its focus of delivering the best products at the lowest prices, Miller said. 

“We’ve got a jittery market to begin with,” he said. “Then you’ve got a company going through a formidable restructuring.” 

The store closings continue a round of belt-tightening at Gateway that began in January, when the company announced it would lay off about 3,000 of its 24,000 workers and take a charge of between $150 million and $275 million in the first quarter related to restructuring. 

About 140 jobs at Gateway’s computer network server plant in Orange County are being eliminated. Operations will be shifted to an existing manufacturing plant in North Sioux City, S.D. by the end of March, spokeswoman Donna Kather said. 

Co-founded in 1985 by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ted Waitt in an Iowa farmhouse, Gateway reported revenues of $9.6 billion last year. Waitt retook the helm as CEO in January.