Stability of the crystal structure is determined by the competition between attractive and repulsive interatomic forces. Using many-body exponential potentials it can be shown that the bcc structure corresponding to austenitic phases is more stable for low values of the q-parameter characterising the attractive forces for a fixed value of the p-parameter describing the repulsive forces. The structural stability can be changed with the acting pressure that may alter the martensitic transformations from the bcc-austenite to a close-packed structure. The effect of pressure is examined in a generic model employing many-body potentials and the results are compared with ab initio calculations for zirconium representing a monoatomic material with displacive phase transformation.