Yeh, it’s the homonym “times” that is causing the confusion. Usually on purpose.
There’s the usage of “times”, as in “Wooo! Riding that shark was fun, let’s do that three more times!”. So, you’d be riding the shark 4 times total.
This isn’t the same as the mathematical operation of multiplication, which we call “times.” There would be no preceding measure of something, as in the first example, which would be compounded upon; so it’s pure multiplication, where you’re starting from pure quantities.
Marketing relies on crap like this, purposefully conflating these two words, to maximize whatever might sound like a better bargain to consumers.
For example, what sounds better?
**“200% more ChumBites!™” ** (50 oz of original-size ChumBites™ x 200% = 100 oz total)
or
**“Now with Two Times as Many ChumBites!™” **(50 oz of original-size ChumBites™ plus two more… +50 oz, +50 oz = 150 oz total).
If you were in the ChumBites™ Business, and were promoting 100 oz over the original 50 oz can for the same price, you could argue that “Two Times as Many” vs. 200% is just semantics, and argue for one over the other if you were ever called on it. So, being shrewd, you wouldn’t let a silly conflation like that get in the way of printing the latter example on every can, would you? No, you’d use it to your advantage.