I think the article presents a counter-point to this. Apologies are effective as long as they are difficult for the apologizer. Corporations are made of lots of working parts, some of which have powerful influences of the organization as a whole. If a president or a CEO makes a public apology and is personally subjected to the challenges that come with apologizing then they may wish to avoid creating a similar situation again. If they are forced to step down because of the backlash, another person may decide that they don't want to pay a similar price.
Of course if a CEO comes out and reads a statement written by corporate lawyers then goes back to same-as-usual because they don't care what anyone thinks of them, that wasn't actually difficult for them. Corporations give people within corporations a lot of protection, and that includes shielding them from a sense of personal responsibility as well as shielding them from financial impacts. I agree that corporate apologies are often useless in practice, but I don't think they can be dismissed as useless in theory.
I feel like the point of the research was to show an economic function of apologies, where the purpose of an apology is not so much the words that are used or the promise that is implied but actually the "pain" inflicted on the party that is apologizing. I agree that in a perfect world the thing that we would want when someone makes a mistake is that they learn from it and act differently in the future. However, for most people, the best indicator that they will act differently in the future is found in how awful they feel about what happened, not in their rational thought about the matter.
Any apology may be hollow, but if it isn't, "This will never happen again," is an indicator that the person cannot stomach the idea of it happening again, which means they will actually try to prevent it from happening again.